Congratulations to all the winners!

There is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, along with two honorable mentions, so five overall placements out of 13 participants.

Please read your full reviews before asking questions. I may answer your question by the end of your review, so I ask you please read it in full before asking questions.

Please be respectful in the comments and don't cause any fights. I put a lot of time and effort into these reviews, and you are always welcome to ask questions, though please give me up to 48 hours to answer them.

I am currently judging normal?, best ongoing, and feel-good. Normal? will be out next, hopefully very soon.

You can expect results 1-2 times per month, maybe every two months at most. Now that I'm out of the situation I was in back in September–November, I can actually work on results for my contests. I would go into it, but today isn't about me, it's about these really, really awesome entries. My gosh was I impressed by this category. You guys did amazing! Congrats, everyone!

3rd Place

Cold Fire by DragonRose25

Review:

Characters: 13/15. The two core characters in the story are Zaire, a prince, and Mara, a princess, so for the sake of this review, I will be focusing on those two!

To begin, Zaire is awesome. I don't even know why, but I just really, really like him. I love how he makes the mistake of letting the secret about Mara slip. It shows that even though he loves her, he's a flawed individual who, like Mara, can be caught up by emotions. Still, he tends to possess the calmer traits of the two, which makes sense considering he's the ice prince. I love how he has moments where he slips into rage, almost as if Mara influenced his personality that way, but in the end, he has that emotional maturity and calmness that Mara needs, and she accepts it. It's just tragic that it happened so late.

As for Mara, I'm invested in her, too. She quite literally is the flame. She has an untamed rage inside her, and her getting her powers really had it burst free. Her rage is extremely understandable. She's caught in the middle of a war she never asked for with her lover on the other side. Or, kind of lover, lol. But that aside, I can't imagine the pressure put on her to develop her powers, and when she does use them, they're basically unstoppable, but also uncontrollable, making her a danger but also really interesting.

Both Zaire and Mara are great protagonists who take the story to new heights. I love how they were like Yin and Yang and how they were such opposites yet so similar. Their worst traits clashed, but at the same time, they healed one another, and I thought that was beautiful.

The only deductions come from something I will explain later in the review where I felt some scenes could have used some slow downs to focus on the reactions of the characters more, but again, I'll explain this later. I do the characters section last when I write reviews, so I already wrote detailed explanations for this critique that I'll let future... or, I guess, past Raven... go into detail about.

Overall, the character work present throughout the story is powerful and is enough to make people tear up, and it also helps that it's elevated by a strong plot.

Plot: 10/10. The plot is excellent. It follows a doomed love story between a prince and a princess, and it'll tug at your heartstrings and make you question your life decisions. The ending is especially tragic, and I must say that's one of the things about this piece that I enjoy the most. It's a well thought out, creative idea that uses its characters effectively to create a gut-punching end. I was genuinely shocked when Zaire and Mara met on the battlefield and it resulted in what it did. Zaire repeating those few words to Mara while they stayed close was amazing. It almost felt like Zaire was melting the rage away from her, as he had before with her powers when she discovered them for the first time. It was a wonderful ending, truly, and it had me sitting there and thinking to myself afterward about all I had just read, and if a piece of work on Wattpad makes me think, that goes to show it's truly awesome.

But even beyond just the ending, the plot is solid. I like how you focus on Mara and Zaire, as I mentioned before, and I like the hint of their powers without it being the sole focus of the narrative. We don't get some long-winded explanation about why they have their powers and yadda yadda; instead, you keep it simple and to-the-point and save the complexity for the emotions and theming. I love that a lot, and I think it works in the plot's favor.

Overall, the plot is really good. It's a war between kingdoms where loyalties are tested and betrayals occur, with Mara and Zaire wrapped up in the center of it with a love that's forbidden. The plot idea is not only solid, but so is the execution with good pacing and strong theming to back it up. All in all, fantastic work with the plot!

Pacing: 12/15. The pacing is solid! The plot moves out at a fluid pace without feeling too fast or too slow. I didn't feel overwhelmed by the events happening, and the one time I did was when Mara was under attack, but that's a good thing since it made me feel for Mara. Everything was happening so fast but also in a way where I could still comprehend it. It reflected Mara's fracturing mental state well, and it makes perfect sense why she would go off the deep end with rage. Her closest friend was killed, she was ambushed and almost lost her life, her captain died in front of her because of her inaction, and then she learned it was all because of the person she thought was her friend. Uh, yeah, I'd go a bit off the deep end too, if I were her. So her change feels natural and engaging, and that ending fight focusing on Zaire and Mara was amazing, too!

The only deductions come from two things. The first being that there are times the paragraphs are unnecessarily long. It's okay to have long paragraphs (I myself use them), but I'm talking about cases where you have multiple main ideas in one paragraph, so there are like two or three paragraphs in one, and I would recommend splitting those types of paragraphs up. For example, the paragraph starting with "It began with a smile..." could be split at "The faint sound of someone muttering..." as the first part of that paragraph is a completely different main idea. I hope that makes sense!

I'll mention it in the dialogue section in more detail, but there were times there was a lot of dialogue, and the story could have benefitted from slowing down and showing more reactions so the reader also had time to process what was going on. I'll save one example for the dialogue section, but another is when Zaire asks Mara to marry him, it could be interesting to have the text slow down for a moment to examine Mara more closely and see her reaction, even if there isn't much of one, in more detail, as it moves into the fall out pretty quickly after that. Maybe for a flickering second, she considers it, softening and maybe even seeming like she'll say yes, but she snaps back into her loyalty and tells him off. Or maybe she's so shocked more flames almost burst out of her. Those are just two random ideas that I'm not saying will definitely work or anything, but those are examples of ways to potentially slow down that moment to flesh out Mara's reaction, and maybe even Zaire's, so we can see his anxiety as he waits for her answer. I hope that makes sense!

Overall, the pacing is pretty solid and does a great job taking the plot and characters from point A to point B!

Creativity & Descriptions: 12.5/15. The creativity for this story is off the charts. This narrative is based off numerous references, including my personal favorite, Dante's (I actually did something similar and wrote a short based on Dante's a while back), yet all the references were written in a way that I honestly didn't even notice. Maybe I was just too sucked in by Zaire and Mara as individuals to notice, but you could tell me this had no references and I'd believe it. They were written in fluidly and in a way that felt natural and easy to read, and I appreciate that.

When it comes to the descriptions, they're great, too. I really love how Zaire is described, and I really like how Mara's powers are described, too. I love how Zaire can calm her flames, and how that contrast is presented to us. All of the descriptions have such strong weight behind them, elevating the story to another level, and I enjoyed the description of Mara's rage at the end. I have a feeling I'm probably gonna just keep saying "I like this, I like that," but I really do. Sometimes the best way to describe my thoughts is to simply say "I like it," and in this case, yeah, I like the descriptions!

Critique-wise, I would recommend breaking up the paragraphs more, like I mentioned in the pacing section. Since I already went over it there, I won't go into detail about it again here other than to mention it since it did impact the descriptions in the story. It could make them feel dragged out since they're in a wall of text rather than on their own.

The second thing is I noticed you used a lot of introductory clauses. I would recommend diversifying that sentence structure a bit to help keep the sentences fresh. It's not a big deal, but it's still something worth mentioning as intro clauses have a very distinct feel to them, so it is more noticeable when they're repeated a lot.

Overall, the story idea is extremely creative, and that when matched with solid descriptions makes for a super engaging story that you won't want to put down.

Worldbuilding: 8/10. The world of this story is absolutely awesome. I was instantly hooked by the ideas you presented here with the different kingdoms, different landscapes, the mystery around the war and what the kingdoms believe, the different names (i.e., Glacien), the powers, etc. Everything is dripping with creativity, and I like how you kept the reason for the war on the vague side. It gives the reader more room to interpret what they want to interpret, not to mention it doesn't matter since we're looking at this through Mara and Zaire's perspectives, and to them, they're so caught up with their own emotions that they're just lashing out, like Zaire telling Mara's secret after countless years of keeping it. So it was a smart decision that I enjoyed.

My only critique is I would have loved to see just a tiny bit more description of these cool worldbuilding elements sprinkled throughout. Like the Glacien soldiers or the Isack Forest. I don't need pounds of exposition about them or to know anything about their properties, but I'm talking physical descriptions since I noticed there weren't many, if any, descriptions of what these unique things looked like, unlike the unique descriptions we got for Mara and Zaire. So it could have been interesting to see some more descriptions for them, but the world is still so interesting that I don't feel comfortable taking off too much for that.

Overall, the worldbuilding is fascinating and features a complex and unique fantasy world unlike anything I have seen before, and it captured my attention instantly.

Dialogue: 13/15. I love the dialogue between Mara and Zaire. It's so beautiful yet so tragic since we know that something's going to happen to them. Zaire is so playful while Mara is more defensive, but when she lets down those walls, it's clear how much she trusts him, and also how much she loves him, even if she won't say it. Zaire is more open with his affection for her, which is an interesting twist on the roles where the prince is normally the more distant one or the overly flirty one. But here, Zaire is a bit teasing and fun, but you can tell he genuinely respects her. Mara is fun to read, too. Her descent from formality to raw rage and emotion was fascinating to watch, and all of this was done via the dialogue.

Oh, and to top it all off, you do dialogue tags correctly. Congrats, you're one of the rare few who I judge who does dialogue tags consistently correctly.

Critique-wise, I only have one thing. In the beginning, when they meet, there's a lot of dialogue all at once starting from "Who are you and what are you doing here?" Since this is our first introduction to the characters, consider slowing this moment down and adding more around the dialogue, or giving more weight to the words by describing voices, body language, facial expressions, etc. How they react to one another's words is how they're characterized, and while you do this later, it could be nice to see some more of it in that chunk of dialogue as there are a lot of lines in a row but not as much description. And there's nothing inherently wrong with a lot of dialogue, though since this is our very first look at both of the characters, it could be interesting to slow down and focus on the reactions and appearances, if that makes sense!

Overall, the dialogue is solid and does an excellent job portraying the personalities of Mara and Zaire without coming off as over-the-top or too high fantasy where the dialogue becomes purple prose-y and unengaging, and to add the cherry on top, the dialogue tags are punctuated and capitalized correctly.

Spelling & Grammar: 8/10. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG, present throughout the story is overall very solid, making for a rewarding, engaging read. It's nice to read something and not worry about the SPAG that much, and it led to me being more immersed in the story. When the technical writing is so good, there's not too much to say other than good job!

There were only some errors here and there, primarily with commas. Here are two examples: Her eyes widened at the sight of the blood and she immediately backed off. Consider: Her eyes widened at the sight of the blood, and she immediately backed off. Seeing her distress, his gaze softened and he raised his hands up. Consider: Seeing her distress, his gaze softened, and he raised his hands. I removed the up since "raised" already implies it, and I added a comma.

Overall, the SPAG is very good and will help suck the reader in!

Title/blurb/cover: 8.5/10. Cold Fire is a wonderful title that inspires intrigue from the moment I read it. It makes me want to investigate the story more and see what you've written. It rolls off the tongue well and inspires curiosity, not to mention it's capitalized correctly. No critiques for the title!

The blurb, like the title, is good. It's simple and really short, but I honestly think it works since, well, it says exactly what the story is about without being too spoiler-y, and it gives the reader enough information to want to read it. So, for those reasons, I have no critiques for the blurb.

The cover is absolutely beautiful. Not only does it support the title well, but it's visually appealing with a fantastic color scheme and two figures almost completely covered by shadows, pulling the reader in and making them wonder what they're looking at. The only minor critique I have is the subtext on bottom is really hard to read. I actually don't know what it says even after zooming in, so consider tweaking the font and/or size and/or brightness of it to help it have more visibility. Otherwise, the cover is awesome!

Total: 85/100

2nd Place

Flos by Eloeide

Review:

Characters: 12/15. The characters throughout Flos are pretty vague, with not too too much in the way of specifics about them aside from a few core character traits and relations they had with Vita, which, by the way, is not at all a criticism. In fact, that's actually what I like about the piece. It's a just-so kind of story, where we follow different characters in their lives under the umbrella of Vita being there in the shadows, implied and sometimes mentioned, but maybe not the focal point of the scene. I thought all of the characters served their purpose to elevate the themes while also having interesting dialogue that I enjoyed. It was stylistic, and everything flowed smoothly.

The only critique I have is it could have been nice to see more of Vita herself, since, for me, she was the most interesting part of the narrative. Her opening scene was incredible and super gripping, and her ending was also awesome, so it could have been interesting to see her more sprinkled in here and there, though that's only if you feel there could be natural areas to implement her. Since her two parts of the narrative were so awesome, it'd be cool to see more.

Overall, the character work is solid. The characters aren't overly complex and do what they need to for the narrative, giving the readers an engaging read they won't forget.

Plot: 10/10. The plot is excellent. It's simple, well-paced, and does a good job keeping the reader engaged throughout. While it could be confusing in some areas about the overall connection these acts share with one another, I think part of that also adds to the charm of the story and really emphasizes how these are people just living their unique lives, connected by Vita. People who otherwise wouldn't meet but have engagements because of ber. The final line of the story is also really impactful, and I enjoyed it very much.

Another thing I enjoyed was the whole commentary on how people can care more about the bad news than the good, and how Vita's passing seemed to get people to care more than when she was around. I like that acknowledgement. And, also, I like how the story is simplistic yet so profound at the same time, covering mental health. Vita's parts were easily the most fascinating for me as I mentioned before, and the two times we really saw her, I was engaged more and more with each word. You truly did an amazing job bringing her and her mental struggles to life, and I couldn't put it down once I started it.

Overall, the plot is awesome. I noticed no plot holes or inconsistencies, either. For those reasons, the plot section deserves the perfect score.

Pacing: 13.5/15. The pacing throughout the storyline is solid and does a good job transitioning from point A to point B. I like how all the characters have their little unique storylines and ideals, and the ending chapter is extremely solid, tying it all together in an amazing way that I loved. Bringing the flowers into it solidifies why the title is the title, and it's very thought-provoking.

Vita's journey is extremely captivating and hooked me right away, so when it comes to the opening chapter's pacing, you did a good job getting readers curious right off the bat with unique descriptions and ideas that will make readers curious to see not only more of the story but more work by you as an author. Along with that, the story being split into acts as chapters was a cool choice that I enjoyed, and it made everything easy to keep track of. Every act felt important and like it needed to be there, so there was no filler or any risk of ever making the reader unengaged.

My only critique is what I mentioned before: it could've been nice to see more of Vita. I say this because the narrative does lose a bit of focus, trying to piece together who is what to Vita and where you're going with the narrative, so the clarity could be improved by checking in more with Vita here and there, maybe just once or twice more, also to hammer home the message since I honestly forgot about Vita's POV until the last chapter when she returned. But when she did return, she packed a powerful punch, so I'm certainly not complaining about that.

Overall, the pacing throughout the story is awesome. The plot unfolds at a natural rate that feels fluid and entertaining, and I was curious to learn more the more I read! Great job!

Creativity & Descriptions: 12/15. The creativity for this story is off the charts. Not only are the title and cover creative (which I will talk about later), but the story idea is, too, and it does an excellent job hooking the reader in with its emotional premise that is fleshed out so well throughout the narrative. Following Vita's mental health and the themes of attention versus isolation was awesome and super fun to read about. Okay, that makes me sound a bit crazy probably, but I think you know what I mean. I find it entertaining not because I want the characters to suffer but because it's profound and makes me think, haha.

Did I sound too crazy? Alright, let's move on, then.

I'll mention it again in the worldbuilding section, but the locations are well-described and feel realistic, making for vivid environments that will suck the reader in, and I'll mention it again, but I wanted to bring it up here first to show some more appreciation for it. For example, the sparrows in act V were a nice touch that implemented the five senses naturally by showing their songs, along with other things like the hammocks swinging to establish the feel of the wind and the sights around them. Those small details made every location feel more vivid. You didn't have paragraphs upon paragraphs of description but rather sprinkled in small but effective detail, and I think that worked extremely well.

But moving more generally, there were some absolutely awesome lines throughout within the descriptions that I adored. For example: In another city, whose name doesn't matter... (act IV). That's probably my favorite line in the entire story. It's a powerful line that says so much with so few words. When I read that, I stopped and had to stare at it for a moment. I normally read on laptop and take notes on iPad as I read, and I try not to write full quotes on iPad since it can get clunky, but I just had to write down that quote, that's how much it stood out to me. It's a gorgeous line that I think anyone reading this can agree inspires a lot of thought.

The only deductions come from some awkward sentences in act I that could be tweaked to help with the flow, though I'll explain that later. Another thing is this excerpt: It [pain] appears and settles in the deepest recesses of feelings and, paradoxically, it provokes lamentations, which are only useful to mourn what cannot be remedied.

This sentence feels a little out of left field stylistically. While the style was more advanced and focused on stronger language, this feels a little purple prose-y and like it could be downsized. It feels like a lot of advanced/pretty words put together for sake of being put together, and it could be beneficial to consider downsizing since your most effective sentences were often your most simplistic ones. So I just felt that moment was a little off since the rest of the story didn't have any sentences like that, and it was a bit jarring upon first read to go from the advanced but still simplistic style to suddenly that one line that felt more purple prose, especially when it doesn't happen again and it's just that one moment. So it's good that it was only one moment, though consider tweaking the line to eliminate risk of purple prose.

The last thing is it could be interesting to have some more descriptions in act IV surrounding the dialogue since it's a very dialogue-heavy chapter, so having some descriptions sprinkled here and there, even minor ones just to show character reactions a bit more, could be beneficial, but that's a really minor thing.

Overall, the creativity and descriptions are very solid and kept me thinking, keeping me engaged throughout all five acts.

Worldbuilding: 10/10. The world is off in the background for the story, focusing on the characters. I don't believe we know where this story takes place, though it is absolutely possible I missed something (my eyes are not the best, after all), but either way, that's not a flaw of the narrative in any way, shape, or form. Like I mentioned in the previous section, there's even a line that says, "In another city, whose name doesn't matter...". That's exactly it: the name doesn't matter because the world isn't the focus here, it's on the people. While worldbuilding is one of the four core storytelling elements, not every story needs to have all four to succeed, and this is one where I really liked the decision to make the world more on the vague side.

The environments are well-described, and like I just mentioned, the focus on the characters and how they interact with their surroundings is what makes the world feel so fleshed out despite us not actually really knowing much about it. It feels real without us being there, without you giving us too many specifics to make us put it into Google Maps to see it for ourselves. It's a great balance that I loved, and I especially loved that line about the city and its name not mattering. I will not shut up about that line, that's how much I enjoyed it.

All in all, the world does exactly what it needs to to keep the storyline engaging. I didn't notice any inconsistencies with the worldbuilding, the environments are well-described, and there are some awesome/powerful lines in relation to the world, so overall, I have no critiques for it!

Dialogue: 13/15. The dialogue is simplistic yet has a lot of flair/style to it, especially throughout act III, where we learn about various Spanish honorifics in a way that's non-intrusive to the plot/characters/what's happening in the scene.

There's not too much to say about the dialogue as the dialogue here exists to propel the characters toward the fifth act, but that's a good thing since it succeeds in doing that, though I'd say the main lines that are impactful appear in the description rather than dialogue. But, again, that's a good thing since it gives more focus to what's going on, keeping the dialogue to a relative minimum in exchange for plot progression, and when we do get dialogue, it very clearly fits the characters talking and flows naturally, without it feeling like you're having dialogue for sake of it or like the characters are speaking what they have to so you as the author can advance the story rather than what the characters realistically would say.

Along with that, the dialogue is mostly formatted correctly, aside from one act I'll mention below, with the dialogue tags being grammatically correct for the vast majority of the story, which immediately gives you an advantage over most participants as dialogue tags being wrong is one of the most common errors I see.

Critique-wise, it's just act III since in act III, the tags are mostly done incorrectly. I.e., "No, not her, the expression she used." he cleared. There needs to be a comma after the "used," making it "...she used," he cleared.

Since this only happened in act III, and inconsistently at that (some of the tags were still correct), I won't take off nearly as much as I normally do for tag errors, especially since the dialogue is so solid. Overall, the dialogue is strong and flows well, making the story feel fleshed out and engaging!

Spelling & Grammar: 7/10. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG for short, is solid throughout the short story, though there are a few errors I'll mention below.

Act I and act III could use some tweaks. Act I has a few errors and awkward sentences, so I would recommend going back and rereading the sentences out loud to see how they flow. I.e.: In life, she never really felt sad, but she did felt desolate.

I think you may have meant: In life, she never really felt sad, but she did feel desolate.

Another example is this: Her plan of making no plans, of doing nothing about it; led her to such an extreme (also from act I).

The semicolon is a bit awkward there. Consider: Her plan of making no plans, of doing nothing about it, led her to such an extreme. That's a minor change but still worth mentioning.

So act I could just use some tweaks since there were a few moments like that, and since it's the opening, I would definitely recommend considering smoothing some of that out whenever you get a chance. The other acts are good, though, aside from the tag errors in act III, but it's also what I mentioned earlier, so I won't spend much time on it. Since I already explained tags previously, I won't go into detail about it again here other than to mention it since it is still a grammar error.

Overall, your SPAG was solid throughout the piece, though acts I and III could just use some tweaks. I hope my suggestions made sense!

Title/blurb/cover: 9/10. The title is Flos, which is a beautiful title that also connects to the cover well (will talk about this later in this section). It's the Latin word for flower, and without even needing to click on the book, I can tell there's going to be an incredible amount of flower imagery present throughout, which makes me curious to see more and see what the book is going to entail. All in all, great job with the title! It's thought-provoking, connects with the short well, and caught my attention.

The blurb is very short and vague, and in 99.9% of cases, I would likely be against it since I'm pretty strongly against vague blurbs, but I honestly don't mind this and think it works for the narrative. It is, in fact, a short story about the day a young woman died alone in her house. It quite literally says: Short story of the day a young woman died alone in her house. So, yeah. Not much to say other than it works! The only minor nitpick I have which I know is probably just a me thing is that I feel like "A short story about the day a young woman died alone in her house" may flow a bit stronger, but I know that's just a nitpick more than anything and really only changes two words, though it's still worth mentioning. All in all, good job with the blurb!

The cover is absolutely gorgeous. I adore the way the F of Flos becomes a flower. It makes the title and cover feel so tightly connected, and I appreciate that so much. The cover has clear colors and high quality, making it not only visually cohesive but also fun to look at. I could stare at this cover all day, that's how gorgeous it is. It's seriously one of the most gorgeous covers I've ever seen, and it's clever since it provides subtext about the story. All in all, awesome job with this cover, it looks stunning!

Total: 86.5/100.

1st Place

Two Name by AkornDefalko

Before I even get into the review, I just want to say this is seriously a brilliant piece. The more I think about it, the more I like it, and I think it's one of my favorites, if not my favorite, Wattpad stories I've ever read. I have read literally thousands in my free time, for the Ambys, for the Shortys, and for my contests, so I really can't emphasize enough just how much I was blown away by this narrative. Seriously, well done.

Now, into the review.

Review:

Characters: 15/15. One word: Brilliant.

It is very rare when I am reading books for a tear to come to my eye. I'll admit, I cry like a little b*tch whenever I watch literally any movie (I don't know why, it's actually kinda concerning), but when I read books? Nah. I cannot remember the last time I cried to a book. But this story, by the end of chapter 3, was getting the waterworks going. I had to stop and take a pacing break at the end of the magnificently-written chapter 3.

The character work in this short is absolutely astonishing, and it blew me away. I have a good five rankings in my head when I read stories and assign them accordingly:

1) Needs major improvement

2) Slightly below average by Wattpad standards

3) Average by Wattpad standards

4) Good by Wattpad standards

5) This can be an actual book since it surpasses Wattpad standards

This short is in the 5 category, one of the rarest categories I put books in. I can see this being a legit short story, so I encourage you to submit it to local literary magazines if you haven't already. The character work here really has me in a chokehold as I'm a big character person, and the way childhood is portrayed while also slipping in tidbits about manhood and growing up was fantastic. You had an amazing blend of different themes that never felt like they overpowered each other but rather worked together to create an amazing piece of fiction. I really felt for the two-named kid, growing up unfairly and having to deal with his own problems while his family crashes and burns around him, only for his final moment in the story to show no further hope for him.

It's a devastating tale that excellently captures the feel of the past without needing to explicitly state it, and it overall tells an excellent story about a kid who deserves so, so much better. Even beyond that, the family are complex, rich characters with countless layers. There's the mom that goes back and forth between missing her child and wanting to ab/se him, the two dads that have very different reactions to the situation, and the other kids. Everyone plays an important role, and the world feels so alive as a result.

While I do have some minor critiques for presentation, I think there are cases where you can have critiques for something but they're so minor that they don't even matter, so I will put the presentation critique in just the pacing and not in this section, too, because the characters here are so incredibly emotionally complex and well-written that I don't feel right giving this section anything below the perfect score. These characters are incredible, so you absolutely deserve the perfect score.

Plot: 9/10. The plot is rather simplistic and character-focused: it's about a kid torn between two names, two homes, and basically different lives. Des is living what he believes to be a normal life up until a tall man he doesn't recognize finds out that Des is his son, and it creates a lot of tension where we don't know how the families are going to react. The tension escalates the further along we get and the more details we get about everything going on. It's a simple plot that follows a kid dealing with family tensions that get taken out on him even though it's not his fault, which makes for a heartbreaking plot that flows clearly from point A to point B, never feeling fluffy or like you're dragging it out for sake of dragging it out. Overall, great job with the plot!

The only critique I have is something I'll cover in more detail in the next section, but the ending could have been slowed down a bit. I can understand wanting to have it go fast, and that's great and something I would agree with, but slowing down just a little could have been beneficial. Though I'll explain more in the next section, I just wanted to mention it here since pacing does of course impact the plot a lot. But overall, the plot is really solid and deserves a very high score.

Pacing: 12.5/15. The pacing throughout the short is overall very solid. Like I mentioned in the previous section, everything flows from point A to point B clearly and smoothly, making for easy-to-follow pacing. The characters are truly the highlight of this piece, with them being super fleshed out and interesting to read about, and that's thanks to the pacing giving the characters that weight. Their development doesn't feel rushed, and every little beat is placed in the right spot. You did an absolutely excellent job with the pacing, hence the high score, and I have very few critiques.

The only two critiques I have is that while I do enjoy the snappy pacing of the ending, it could be beneficial to slow down just a bit so we can capture more of what's going on in the moment and capture more of Des' feelings since we spent the whole short really taking a close look at his feelings, so the sudden snap is very shocking, which is good, though it could benefit from a slight slow down, just a little (like maybe 1-5 sentences at most) to really hammer it home. With that being said, I think it was great that you ended on the song again. That was a really good decision, and I liked that a lot.

Another thing is chapter 2 slowed down a bit unnecessarily with some descriptions that were a bit too flowery, but I'll explain that in the next section. I still wanted to mention it here since it does impact pacing minorly. Other than those two minor things, the pacing is really good!

Creativity & Descriptions: 13/15. This story is really, really creative. It takes the tale of a kid torn between essentially two lives and shows it through the idea of having two names. That's a super creative idea, and a really cool way to take this theme. I already don't see this theme written about a lot on Wattpad, so to take that and then on top of that display it in a unique way made for a double whammy of creativeness. Oh, no, I mean triple whammy because the descriptions are super creative, too!

Speaking of...

(I'm so good at transitions mhm mhm)

The descriptions are also on point, with them never overstaying their welcome. As I'll explain in the dialogue section, the dialogue and the descriptions/actions interact so well and feel like they connect, each line feeling important and like it deeply matters to what's going on. You did a great job bringing Des' emotions to life with the song and the way you describe the things in his life, alternating between the more complex emotions and the basics that a kid may resort to. I really loved the decision to call the second, or I suppose "first," dad the Clydesdale man and use that description to identify him, and also how there was an emphasis on describing the different lifestyles Des experiences depending on where he is. It makes each location feel unique and engaging, and I didn't want to put the book down as a result.

The only critique I had is what I mentioned before where there were some parts of chapter 2 that felt a little too flowery, especially for a kid's point of view. I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say we have no issues with younger characters having more advanced speech and a more advanced point of view, so I'm not saying make it Cocomelon, though the language in chapter 2 and only chapter 2 could be downsized a bit. Like the "I feel every tendril fraying at every beat of my heart..." part felt a little too flowery for Des, especially considering there aren't really any descriptions of this type afterward, from what I recall, so it felt a little out of place, but it's not a huge deal by any means, hence why the score is still so high.

Worldbuilding: 10/10. The world is seen through the perspective of a kid, and the way you realistically write this topic was incredible. Everything felt so viscerally real, and I mean that in the best way possible. I love how you refer to the other father as the Clydesdale man, and how you don't go too into detail about the ab/se like by having whole scenes of prolonged ab/se, but you show it enough that it's effective and horrifying. Sometimes being able to fill in the blanks with limited details is better than having every little thing, and here, you use the small details to elevate the overall horror of what this poor kid is going through. For example, in chapter 2, with daddy-who-isn't-my-daddy yelling at the other kids to shut up but not quite defending Des either. It's a subtle moment that may not seem like it matters to the world, but those details are what make the world feel so alive. One of the main goals in film is to make the world feel so alive that you feel like it's still moving even when it's off screen, or when you switch scenes to see another part of the world. Here, in your short, I felt like the world was constantly moving, even when Des was with different people in different houses. You do a fantastic job immersing us in this period and the realistic way people would go about this situation. Overall, I have no critiques for this category and think you did an excellent job making the world feel real, both in terms of the physical location and also the reality of the events actually happening.

Dialogue: 13.5/15. The dialogue is very, very interesting. You perfectly capture the feel of each character without going overboard with anything. I always think it's more interesting to show instead of tell things about how characters speak by having descriptions of the dialogue to supplement it, and you did a great job here with that, giving each line of dialogue more weight. I've always been of the belief that a story is not dialogue but rather the actions and descriptions leading up to the dialogue (i.e., if you say "I love you" by itself, it's nice and all, but not as effective as a whole story where we see and feel the love, thus making the "I love you" line more impactful), and you have a great balance between powerful lines and powerful descriptions that work together to create amazing characters. I seriously think everyone should read this story, it's so good, honestly. I thoroughly enjoyed my read, and a lot of that is because of the dialogue doing such an excellent job capturing the anguish of the characters and the realities of the situation they're facing. I especially love it when the dialogue transitions to an action, like in chapter 3, with Des opening up about the two name song he made only to then get embraced afterwards. That was why I teared up and was on the verge of crying like a punk little b*tch. That one moment was so powerful and spoke to me a lot, and that's because of the relationship between the dialogue and the descriptions and how they work together to create one emotional blend that will tug at everyone's heartstrings. Just awesome.

The only deductions come from the technical side of things, where dialogue tags are done inconsistently, where sometimes they're correct, other times they're not, so I would just recommend some more consistency with them. For example, sometimes you'll have a line like this: "Don't bring him back this time." Old daddy says (chap 4). Or you'll capitalize the tag even though it's not a proper noun. So the first example needs a comma instead of a period/full stop, and when using a tag after the dialogue, no matter if the dialogue ends with a ? or !, the tag needs to be lowercase unless it is a proper noun, so when saying things like "my daddy informs" or "my daddy states," the "my" will need to be lowercase, though sometimes words like that get a capital letter when being used as a tag. So the line would become: "Don't bring him back this time," old daddy says. But that's the only critique I have, and it's a good sign that the only critique I have is a technical thing and not a creative thing, so awesome job with this!

Spelling & Grammar: 9/10. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG for short, is excellent throughout this story. Everything is so carefully crafted to create a compelling journey, and I loved every second. I don't think I noticed a single typo throughout the short, which is incredible, or if there were any spelling errors, they were minor enough to go unnoticed. When the SPAG is good, I don't really have much to say, so good job!

The only minor deduction comes from the dialogue tag errors I mentioned above since they are a grammar error as well, but I figured it'd be more fitting to explain them in the dialogue section than the grammar section. Otherwise, there were no consistent grammar errors that I noticed, or if there was anything, it was minor enough that I didn't notice it, which means it's easy enough to skip over and not disrupt the reading flow. Great job!

Title/blurb/cover: 8/10. The title is Two Name, which deeply relates to the story and rolls off the tongue well. There are no SPAG errors in the story, so excellent job with that, too. It's simple and to-the-point, but it reflects the narrative and packs an extra punch after you read the story. No critiques for the title.

The blurb is a little tricky for me to judge. Personally, I've never been a fan of just a quote from the story being a blurb because I don't think that's really a blurb, it's an excerpt. Though, in this case, the excerpt is intriguing, well-written (free from SPAG errors), and it shows what the story is about. So while I do think it could be beneficial to have a short blurb describing what the story is going to be about, I also enjoy the excerpt chosen, so I'm honestly a bit torn about how to feel about the blurb. For that reason, I'm just going to say you could maybe consider having a short blurb to describe what happens, but only include it if you feel it effectively sets the tone you want for the story, since the quote does do a surprisingly good job at setting the tone despite being an excerpt, which is something I very rarely see with excerpts as blurbs. I hope everything I said made sense. I'm a bit stuck on how to feel, so I barely make sense to myself right now, haha. All in all, the blurb does intrigue me, so I can't fault you for that!

The cover is really cute but also sad. The little boxes were great choices to reflect the story, especially with the sad yet cute tone it carries. Des is an adorable kid who is growing up with two names and two families, so having the two boxes was clever and, in a way, makes it feel like it reflects that child-like nature Des deserves to have, and same with the one box being gone since it reflects the ending very, very well in a way the readers won't expect. The only minor critique I have is I'm not a huge fan of the font and placement of the text. Consider moving the title card up a bit and the author's name down a bit so they aren't overlapping as much with the boxes, but that's just a minor thing. I'm also not a graphic designer (I should be put as far away from graphic design as possible...), so that's just a minor suggestion but not something you absolutely have to do, and I would recommend getting a second opinion about the cover before making any changes from someone more experienced than me. Overall, the cover is cute and does a great job showing the themes of the story in subtle ways.

Total: 90/100.

Honorable Mention

Thin Air by Jahools

Review:

Characters: 12/15. The main characters here are Hana and Yoongi, the female and male leads respectively, though there are other supporting characters as well, such as Yoongi's ex and the BTS members. For the purpose of this review, I will focus on Hana and Yoongi, though I will mention the BTS members as well.

I'll actually start with the BTS members: I like them and their presence in the story. I like how you consistently write Namjoon and Yoongi as best bros who would do anything for each other, with Namjoon being like a guiding light for Yoongi who's always ready to drop anything to protect him. The other boys have qualities like that, too, like Jin, and I appreciated how they all stood up for one another and showed clear brotherly love. It's always wholesome to see that kind of content.

I like Hana and Yoongi as the leads and how they're both dealing with their own struggles they have to overcome as individuals before they can focus on them as a grander relationship. Of course they support one another, but I thought it was interesting to see Yoongi working through Misun while Hana worked through her mother's illness, and another thing I found interesting was Hana in particular and her thoughts on independence, as highlighted by chapter 7, where she has questioning thoughts about whether it's better to stay on her own or go back to her mother during her potentially final moments. At the same time, that scene didn't feel like depressing character talk to make us care about the characters, it felt natural and like the two genuinely had weight they needed to let off, and I appreciated that. I also appreciate how Yoongi is prone to blowing up at Misun and getting all angry, as he has every right to be. This is his final straw, seeing as he's been cheated on before. So when it comes to the two leads, I'm glad they have individual traits that make them stand out but also a nice dynamic together that makes them work as a couple, too.

My only critique is a bit major and something I'll explain more of later, but the character actions and emotions could be diversified more since a lot of it is put in dialogue and leans heavily on said dialogue to elevate it, and there are times I felt you could have expanded on the descriptions in general to make the scenes feel more emotionally impactful with the characters, but I'll explain those two things throughout the review. All in all, the character work here is pretty solid.

Plot: 9/10. The plot is simple: Yoongi finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him (who tf would cheat on Min Yoongi... surely not LAJoyner; she would treat him right). From there, he bumps into a new woman, Hana, and it's like she's popping out of thin air, hence the title. They grow a relationship over the course of the story with BTS teasing them in the background, and they have to address the various trauma Yoongi has while also supporting each other in their grander struggles.

It's a simple plot that does its job to keep the narrative moving at a steady pace, making it feel like it has proper focus on Yoongi, Hana, and the themes. This is a character and theme-driven narrative, so it makes sense for, well, the characters and themes to take the center stage. I liked your decision to make this plot centered around Yoongi's feelings and feelings of shortcomings as a person for his partners, as that made for a sad yet entertaining read.

The only minor deduction comes from some pacing issues that I will explain below, but I still want to mention it here since the pacing of course impacts the plot a lot.

Overall, the plot is to-the-point and works for the narrative, giving the spotlight to the themes and characters in a meaningful way.

Pacing: 12.5/15. The story is overall well-paced, with the highlight being how character information is revealed to us. We learn more about Hana progressively, which makes her more interesting as a character since you don't just dump it on us all at once. It's also smart since we get thrown into it with Yoongi early on, which makes for a good hook, but it also means we needed time to focus on Yoongi. It was a good decision to have Hana's opening scene be something more casual rather than some big, grand thing where now we're focusing on Yoongi's complicated side of the story and Hana's only three chapters in. So when it comes to how the character information is paced, it's good, and the same applies to the overall plot.

Critique-wise, the main thing I'd say is it could slow down to focus more on emotions and descriptions than dialogue as there are a lot of moments where it's 70-90% dialogue and not much description outside of small actions, like he nodded or she shrugged. There were many times it would be primarily dialogue with little focus on what's happening around them in the world, like chapter 4 lacking descriptions, though I'll explain these things in a bit more detail with more specific suggestions both next category and the category after.

All in all, the pacing is solid and does a good job elevating the narrative and making it feel well-rounded.

Creativity & Descriptions: 12/15. I honestly really like the concept of thin air and how Hana just keeps popping up out of seemingly thin air. It's comedic but also does a good job pushing Yoongi. It challenges him to break down his walls and trust someone new again, though it is understandable why he isn't immediately like "Yeah let's do this," considering he just got cheated on. So when it comes to the story idea and how it's so closely entwined with the title, I think it's good! You have the creativity nailed.

When the descriptions are present, they do their job to elevate the narrative and keep it going. I don't think this is the type of story where you need paragraphs upon paragraphs of description, though it could be nice to see some more.

My main critique is something I may have brought up in past reviews, though I'm not entirely sure (I have the memory of a goldfish), so I apologize if I've said it before and I'm sounding like a broken record right now, though there is a lot of sighing, nodding, shaking heads, and other of the basic action descriptions like that. That when coupled with the moments where descriptions are lacking (will talk about this in the worldbuilding section) means that sometimes the descriptions feel not as engaging as they otherwise could be. The frequent repetition of the various actions I mentioned made the character reactions feel a bit repetitive at times, which can hurt a reader's interest in what's going on.

With all that being said, I still overall enjoy the creativity and descriptions and think you do a good job bringing this story idea to life in a meaningful way.

Worldbuilding: 8/10. The world is not one of the key focuses for this narrative, and that makes sense since this is a narrative about Yoongi and Hana and their struggles. We don't need some grand location that they talk about every day, or whole exposition dumps about things about the world that we need to know, yadda yadda. It's a small, contained story, and that's exactly what Hana and Yoongi need. So you did a good job with the creative direction here by keeping it more contained while also having clear locations for most scenes, like Misun's apartment and the emotions it sparks within Yoongi, making it so the world (in this case, a location in the world, Misun's apartment) impacts the characters on a deeper level. Sometimes the best worldbuilding is the type that has the locations impacting the characters emotionally, and that's what the world here does.

Like I alluded to in the creativity section, there were times the location wasn't described as much as it could have been. For example, the club in chapter 4 is described loosely and in a stereotypical club way, which isn't inherently a bad thing, but it does mean it's not as fun to think about as other locations might be. And like I mentioned before, there are times the text will have a lot of dialogue with relatively simple action descriptions (i.e., the shrugging and nodding). Like in chapter 7. As much as I do like that chapter and the dialogue within it, there's very little happening around the dialogue in the later parts of chapter 7, and of what's happening, most of it is the same we've seen before with sighing, staring, nodding, etc., so it could be nice to expand on this more since it can help the world feel more fleshed out the more they're interacting with each other, themselves, and the world around them (i.e., maybe Yoongi fumbles pulling his phone out of his pocket, or he tries to chase after Hana and bangs his knee off the bar, or maybe say where Hana goes when she takes Yoongi's phone since all that's said is she "walks away," but walks where?). I hope all of that makes sense!

Overall, the worldbuilding takes a backseat, but it feels like a needed backseat to focus on Yoongi and Hana's relationship along with the themes present in the piece.

Dialogue: 10/15. The dialogue is solid throughout the story, doing a good job showing the clear character traits not only of Hana and Yoongi but for the other BTS members as well. All of them feel unique to themselves, and I liked how they showed cared for one another through spoken words. Along with that, other than one thing I'll mention about actions, the tags are formatted correctly with proper punctuation and capitalization. So, all in all, great job!

I have a few critiques for the dialogue, and I believe I've mentioned them in past reviews, so I won't dwell on them too much here. To begin, there are a lot of tags at times, where you'll use a lot of them back-to-back when only two people are talking, and it could be beneficial to cut down on those tags. It's not a big deal, but it can be diversified to keep the reading experience a little more unique as tags can get repetitive quickly. Consider making it so less than 50% of your dialogue has tags.

Another thing is the actions as tags, such as "she chuckled" (chapter 3) being used as a tag. I would recommend avoiding using actions as tags because they can come off as a little unnatural since words can't really chuckle, but people can. So consider these alternatives:

She chuckled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," she said with a chuckle.

"Dialogue." She chuckled. "More dialogue."

Those are a few alternatives, but there are plenty, so I encourage you to play around with it!

The last thing is I would recommend avoiding semicolons in dialogue. It's not a big deal, though semicolons in dialogue can be a bit unnatural, so consider downsizing whenever possible as we don't really speak in a way that warrants semicolon usage, if that makes sense.

Overall, the dialogue works for the narrative and characterizes Hana and Yoongi well, though it could use some minor tweaks to its presentation.

Spelling & Grammar: 8/10. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG, is overall solid throughout the entire story, with very few errors, and only one consistent error I noticed that I will leave below. When the SPAG is good, there's not much to say other than you did a great job with it, so good job!

The only main error I noticed was compound predicate comma errors. For example: Yoongi rolled his eyes as he walked inside, and almost ran smack dab into the others. The comma is unneeded. I believe I may have mentioned these errors in the past, so I won't spend too much time on them other than to say these comma errors are frequent, and comma errors are larger grammar errors, so that's why I'm bringing them up even though I believe I've mentioned them in the past. Other than that, though, I thought the SPAG was great.

Title/blurb/cover: 8/10. The title is Thin Air, which is a good title that works for the story. I have foresight here where I've already read the story at least twice, so I know that it connects well. It's capitalized correctly, too. For those reasons, I have no critiques of the title.

The blurb is just one sentence that sums up the plot well, and from what I can tell, it doesn't have any SPAG errors. For those reasons, I think it deserves full credit. It's simple and to-the-point. It's not the most cinematic, so maybe it can be played around with to be more dramatic, but honestly, I think it works, based the fact that it sums up the story exactly and my pre-existing knowledge of the story letting me know that... yeah, the blurb is telling you everything you need to know, lol. So, for those reasons, no critiques.

The only area points were deducted from was the cover because it is a little clunky, in my opinion. I don't quite see the correlation with the title, and the text, both the title card and author's name, is a bit hard to read. It could be interesting to play around with it a bit to see if there's a way to make it more visually cohesive. That being said, I do like the color scheme and how Yoongi is bright and mostly white while the woman is hidden in the shadows. It also helps that Yoongi's eyes are closed, and considering the narrative, it makes sense that his eyes would be closed since he's refusing to see her after his breakup. So, all in all, the cover has a cool color scheme though could use some tweaks to make it more visually cohesive.

Total: 79.5/100.

Honorable Mention

Percy Jackson And The River Star by MRArcher_writer

Review:

Characters: 11/15. The characters present throughout the novel are mostly based on pre-existing characters from the Percy Jackson novel series, with Percy taking the spotlight as the protagonist and first-person narrator here. I'll mention it a few times throughout the review, though I never read the original books, but that is not a problem here! I can tell Percy is as Percy as ever, since even though I've never read the books, I feel like most people who have heard of the series knows Percy's personality, and you capture it really well here. I enjoyed reading about Percy and thought you did a great job bringing his sense for adventure to life.

Along with that, Grover is solid, too. He isn't as present in the narrative as Percy is, but that works well since he's a good supporting character who gives Percy time to shine. Grover was fun to read, and even though I'm not as familiar with Grover as I am Percy, I can tell you captured his personality well, too.

The only critique I have is I wasn't as interested in Vitoria (forgive me, I don't have accents on my keyboard) as I was with the other characters. I think all she needed was more time to get fleshed out as she's introduced and gone pretty quickly, with little time to learn much about her. She aligns a little with the common strong female character archetype that's been very present in the past five years, which isn't inherently a bad thing, though it does mean it could have been interesting to have a little more time dedicated to her to see more of her personality, as we don't really get to see much of it until the third chapter, and by the end of that chapter, she's gone.

For example, there are two moments in chapter 2 that felt a bit off to me. This first: "Vitoria told us naturally." What does the naturally mean here? Consider another adverb or a showing over telling method. I.e., maybe she speaks with her hands, adding a little layer to her, or maybe describe her voice more, as I don't recall seeing any descriptions about her voice.

Another moment was shortly after that one, with "There was something kind in her, even when she was rude." I felt this moment was off since it felt like a really on-the-nose telling over showing moment where you as the author were telling us this instead of Percy having any real reason to think this. The reason is because prior to that moment, Vitoria spoke five lines, that's it, so Percy has only known her for about a minute. It's more the "even when she was rude" line since that implies he's known her for a bit, but she's really only said one slightly-rude thing, and like I said, he's only known her for about a minute, and that's without factoring in how she seemed super sweet prior to that one sassy line. So consider showing more of her traits instead of telling them to us like that, is essentially what I'm saying. She has potential to be really interesting, she could just use some tweaks to her presentation where the audience is given more of a chance to see her for themselves rather than have you or Percy tell us about her, if that makes sense.

That being said, though, there were aspects of her character that I did enjoy, like her calling Percy river boy and the chupacabra line I'll mention again in the dialogue section. And, hey, if my critique boils down to "I would have liked to see more of *insert thing here*," I'd say you're honestly doing something right, since that means I just want to see more. There was nothing about her that I disliked, I just wasn't as interested due to the lack of time given to her, that's all. So, all in all, the character work is pretty solid throughout this piece and deserves a high score!

Plot: 10/10. The plot is strong and definitely feels like it fits the Percy Jackson universe. Now I'm not totally familiar with it as I haven't read it, but I know the basics of the world well enough to say that this feels like a fun adventure Percy would have. I think you did a great job bringing that sense of adventure to life here. I like the plot twist by the end of the core chapter (the third one). It added another layer to the plot to give it more intrigue, and I thought that was neat. The pacing is also pretty solid, so that makes for an all around good plot. I also also didn't notice any plot holes or inconsistencies. For those reasons, I think the plot section deserves the perfect score!

Pacing: 12/15. I want to start by saying the opening line is really good. Mentioning the tank full of fish and the Boeing instantly caught my eye and did a good job hooking me in, so right off the bat, you're off to a great start since you effectively make the reader think "What the heck did I just read?", but I mean that in the best way possible.

Aside from the opening, the pacing throughout the novel is overall good and does what it needs to to keep the story moving. Like I mentioned in the plot section, the plot flows from point A to point B smoothly, not overstaying its welcome or feeling dragged out. So when it comes to the plot side of the pacing, you did a good job bringing it to life and making it feel fluid.

Along with that, the chapters start and end at good times, like the third chapter ends on a good twist that keeps the plot engaging, and considering that chapter is much longer than all the others, I'm glad you ended it on that note to give readers a kind of adrenaline spike right at the end, making them eager to see what comes next, so good job with that!

When it comes to critiques, I don't have much. This is a small thing that I just wanted to ask about, but are the last two chapters purposefully the same? It seems the last two are basically identical, so I wanted to inquire about that since I was a bit confused with them being the same.

But moving away from that, the only critique I have is what I mentioned in the characters section where it felt like Vitoria could have been more fleshed out, seeing as she's a major part of the narrative, so it could have been interesting to have more time dedicated to her. But otherwise, I thought the pacing was good, and it's definitely deserving of a high score!

Creativity & Descriptions: 12/15. The story idea is solid, as I mentioned in the plot section. It's a perfect fit for the Percy Jackson universe, making it feel like this fanfic could really be a short story that's canon in the storyline. That when mixed with how you capture Percy's personality makes it a really fun read, and you'd kinda have to be miserable to not find at least some entertainment with this story, and a lot of that is because of the general idea and how much fun the writing style in Percy's perspective is.

And, on a side note, I admire that about you as an author. I've read your other work, and I admire how different the writing direction is. I appreciate that you experiment and try new things with your writing, and I encourage you to keep doing that!

But back to the core of the review, the descriptions are also good, and I liked how blue is used here to "calm" Percy, but it ends up annoying him pretty quickly, haha. Those small details are what make the story feel more alive and layered, and I appreciate that. So when combined, the creativity and descriptions are good, making for an engaging read.

I have two critiques. One is to be careful with redundancy/unneeded repetition. For example, in chapter two, there's the line "he nodded his head." I see many of those types of phrases across Wattpad, like "he blinked his eyes," "he shrugged his shoulders," and "he nodded his head." The common denominator is that you can remove the second half from all of them and they'd be more fluid. We know when someone nods, they're nodding their heads, so we don't need to be told that's what they're nodding. The definition of a nod is to "lower and raise one's head slightly and briefly" (Oxford), which means when you say "he nodded his head," you're essentially saying "he lowered and raised his head his head." See why that's redundant? So it may seem like a small thing, and it is, but it's still worth considering since tightening word choice like that can help with sentence fluidity and engagement.

The second thing is there are some awkward sentences that make the descriptions feel not as fluid as they otherwise could be, though I'll go over that in the grammar section. I wanted to mention it here since it did factor into the score, but future Raven will explain the awkward sentences that popped up here and there.

Overall, the creativity and descriptions are good and do what they need to to elevate the story!

Worldbuilding: 8.5/10. The world is pretty fleshed out, and this is a small thing, but I'm happy you actually told us where Percy was going and where he's from. You'd be surprised just how many stories I read where I actually have no idea where they take place. I couldn't even tell you a continent, that's how vague the world is. Like, I'm talking full 50+ chapter novels where I have literally zero clue where the story takes place because the authors don't say and don't really describe the world at all, so I was happy to see Brazil mentioned and loosely described, along with Portuguese being present. That's a small thing, but it makes my life easier as a reviewer not having to second-guess if the location was mentioned and I just missed it and panicking over whether or not I'm going to upset someone because I didn't quite catch the vague location. So, thank you for being specific about it.

Another thing is that as a non-fan, I didn't feel excluded, but at the same time, you didn't make it exposition-heavy where you pandered too much to non-fans. You explained who they were the children of but briefly, you explained Percy was from New York but briefly, and you explained other things, like the centaurs, but briefly. Those brief explanations made it so it didn't feel too exposition-heavy but still gave non-fans a chance to immerse themselves in the narrative. So that's yet another element of the worldbuilding that I appreciated.

When it comes to the descriptions, they're overall good, too, other than the minor things I mentioned before about awkward sentences and redundancy here and there, though the overall description work is good and gives me a good sense of where we are in the world and what's going on.

When it comes to critiques, this is probably a bit nit-picky, but it does happen more than once, so that's why I'm bringing it up (that and it does matter considering Percy is a New Yorker): Percy using meters to describe heights and things is a bit odd. I'm a New Yorker like him, and Americans don't use meters, let alone in those circumstances and at that age. I mean, maybe in some circumstances (especially scientific, as I've seen things like meters and Celsius used for more professional lab settings), but it just seems a bit off for a thirteen-year-old American to use meters, especially when you use the US version of gray, so having it be a mix between some American English things and some other non-US English things was a bit jarring, considering Percy is American and, from my understanding, was born and raised in New York (I've never read the original series, though I did Google it and look into it). So I would recommend using feet, inches, centimeters, etc. I know that's a small thing, but it's still worth mentioning since it did make me scratch my head, and it did conflict with the other US English terms present throughout. I hope that makes sense!

Overall, the worldbuilding is solid and does a good job giving both fans and non-fans something to engage themselves in, therefore I think it deserves a high score!

Dialogue: 11/15. You do a good job capturing Percy's personality in particular through the dialogue. While I've said before that I'm not a Percy Jackson guru, you kinda have to be living under a rock to not know Percy's personality. I've watched Friendly Space Ninja's video on the Percy Jackson show where he goes into detail about Percy's personality and how to capture it through dialogue, and this here is exactly what he is talking about. You have the sense of adventure, the jokes, the confidence, and the compassion toward his friends. And you showed all of that through dialogue!

The same applies to Grover, where the dialogue feels very Grover-esque, which is, of course, a positive. I also liked the chupacabra line that was repeated. I know that's a small thing, but the small things matter, and I think you did a good job incorporating little details like that to make the narrative feel more well-rounded and engaging. So, all in all, the dialogue is solid, as you can probably tell based on the high score.

When it comes to critiques, I'll start with more of a nitpick and then get into the main critique. In chapter 1, this is a really small thing but still noticeable, I noticed how often the name "Percy" was said in dialogue. It could be worth it to downsize on that since I started noticing it being used almost every line, which got a bit repetitive since both Chiron and Annabeth were doing it, so maybe consider downsizing, but again, that's a nitpick more than anything, so it's not a big deal.

The main thing is the dialogue tags are done incorrectly. When you use a tag, you often end it with a period/full stop when you need a comma. I.e., "She needs our help, Percy." Chiron said (chap 1). It should be: "She needs our help, Percy," Chiron said. The majority of dialogue tags are written like this, so for future works, I would recommend making sure when you're using a tag after the dialogue, you use a comma instead of a period/full stop. Since you do the special tags fine (the tags coming after ? and !), I won't take off as much as normal, though it is heavily factored into the score since it is a major part of dialogue.

Overall, the dialogue is good and definitely does a great job capturing Percy's personality. It feels very alive and fresh, and I think you all in all did a solid job with it!

Spelling & Grammar: 6/10. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG for short, is overall okay and does what it needs to for the story. There could be improvements to help with readability, though, and I'll go over them below.

There are minor comma errors here and there. I.e., If it were not for Grover, Annabeth, and yours truly the world would be ashes at this very moment (chap 1). There should be a comma after "truly," so it would become: If it were not for Grover, Annabeth, and yours truly, the world would be ashes at this very moment.

There are minor capitalization errors where improper nouns get capitalized, such as college being College in chapter 1. There was no name attached to the college, and it was being used as a general noun, so it can be lowercase. The same applies to university being capitalized since there is no name or implication of a name attached to it, so it should be lowercase. If you were to say New York University, then yes, in that case, the university is capitalized, but when being used as a general noun, it can remain lowercase. I hope that makes sense!

There were a few times end punctuation was incorrect, such as "Who's Iara?" I asked

There is no period/full stop there, and I would recommend having one there to close the sentence off (this is from chapter 1). Not a big deal since it didn't happen often, but still worth mentioning. So it would become: "Who's Iara?" I asked.

Another really small thing is I would recommend spelling out numbers under 101 (when they're being used generally, like talking about age). According to CMOS, or Chicago, the manuscript editing format, numbers under 101 should be spelled out. Not in every case, but in a lot of them. So instead of 10 hours, consider ten hours (chap 2). I also say this because it looks a bit neater within the text. By that I mean, it's easier to read ten hours as opposed to 10 hours. So that's a small thing but still worth mentioning.

The last thing is there were some awkward moments where I believe maybe words were misspelled, like these two moments in chapter two: She hold me. ...peach black.... I believe you meant She holds me and ...pitch black... (the peach black is in the last 1/4th of the chapter).

So overall, the SPAG is okay, it could just use some tweaks. I hope all of my suggestions made sense!

Title/blurb/cover: 8.5/10. The title is Percy Jackson And The River Star, and even though I've never read the books, that definitely feels like it would be the name of a Percy Jackson book. It just kinda has the vibes, you know what I mean? So that means I like the title and think it fits in well with the story (I admittedly read it prior to writing this section, even though I try to write this section first before reading). The only minor critique I have is I would recommend lowercasing the and and the, so Percy Jackson and the River Star. I say this because according to Chicago, the "and" and "the" should be lowercase, and other writing formats say the same. But other than that very minor thing, I like the title!

As for the blurb, I think it works. It's short and to-the-point, not wasting time or overstaying its welcome. It clearly introduces what the plot is without providing too many spoilers but also providing enough detail that we know what we're getting in to. It also clearly introduces the characters and lets us know who we're going to be following, and it sets the stakes for what's going to happen so we know why we should care and click on the story, making it overall a good blurb.

There are a couple of errors, like a intricated instead of an intricated, and offical instead of official. I spell checked on different English styles just to make sure there were no different spellings, and those two seem to be the correct ones all around. I would overall recommend spelling it as extra-official. The other thing is you may want to consider using a different adjective to describe Vitoria other than "strong" since it's really vague and doesn't tell me anything about her. Do you mean physically strong? Emotionally strong? So that doesn't really narrow it down and comes across as more vague than specific, so you may want to consider a different adjective, especially for the Percy Jackson universe since, from my understanding of it, there are a lot of creatures and gods and different types of people, so strong could literally mean Vitoria is some super buff chick, hence why you could benefit from being more specific as I didn't feel "strong" told me much, if anything, about her. That's a minor thing but still worth mentioning. Overall, the blurb does what it needs to for the story and lets the reader know what they're getting in to.

The cover, like the blurb and title, works for the story. It's a cute graphic that's colorful and feels fantastical, showing a river and beautiful scenery illuminated by a golden glow. It's very pretty and peaceful, and I like how magical it feels. For those reasons, I have no critiques and think the cover is great!

Total: 79/100

ALL REVIEWS:

The Hidden Cassowary by Itz_jjkstan

Review:

Characters: 10/15. There are quite a few things about the characters that I like, like their determination to do a good job and be role models to the city they are trying to protect, and I like how you gave them interesting character moments to make them stand out from one another. For example, you start your character work as early as chapter 1, showing the unique scene of Taehyung hating coffee but ordering it anyway so he could punish himself for his "failure" of more murders taking place in the city. I know that's probably a small thing to point out, but the little details matter and are what make characters so unique and engaging, so I think you did a good job with the small details like that. Another detail I like is how Lia is a health freak and has a light, healthy breakfast. That's another small thing, but I really liked it. I like how you specifically said what she was having for breakfast (sprouts) without going into a long-winded description of it, instead just mentioning it and giving that specific detail without making it overstay its welcome. So I like how you gave those details but also didn't focus on them so much that we suddenly have a whole paragraph just describing breakfast. That made for a good balance that I enjoyed.

Another thing I enjoyed was the overall concept for the characters, like having Y/n be child-like due to mental illness and having that serious topic be covered through the lens of a relationship and how that can impact Namjoon and Y/n's relationship, especially considering how Namjoon is a cop, a stressful position, and having his girlfriend barging in and arguing with him because she feels neglected can be really, really distracting and test Namjoon's patience. So I think that was an interesting concept to go for that made the characters stand out. Like I mentioned before, I think you do a good job making the characters feel individual and making them really stand out from one another.

Wow, can you tell I wrote that prior to reading the later parts of the story? I take notes as I read, so that's what I wrote in the beginning during the segment where Y/n ran out on Namjoon, and now, I'm writing after reading the whole segment explaining Y/n's involvement in the plot. I think the twist with Y/n is really good. Jungkook was suspect #1 on my list, but even with me suspecting him, I still enjoyed seeing the aftermath and watching him try to explain himself. I think choosing to have Jungkook and Y/n be a dynamic duo here was a great choice that made for strong tension, and I really didn't see the Y/n twist coming. Awesome job!

The only deductions come from frequent dialogue errors and some description issues I'll explain in their respective sections, but I still wanted to mention it here so you know where the deductions come from. But, overall, when it comes to the character work, I think you did a good job with it.

Plot: 7/10. The plot is a murder mystery, with the cop characters disappointed in themselves for not catching the killer sooner and doing everything in their power to try and steamroll forward and catch who it is. People are dropping like flies, and it's up to the police department to stop it before it's too late; however, it's later revealed that the killer may be closer than the cops ever could have imagined, leading to rising tensions within the core relationships in the story and action that will redefine the characters' lives.

So that's the plot synopsis from my perspective, and I overall think this plot works for the story. It has interesting twists scattered throughout to keep the reader entertained. It's a standard murder mystery, but the twists give it an extra flair that makes it stand out. I think the plot does a good job keeping the reader entertained and giving good reasons for the BTS members to be there, like Hoseok getting shot and almost killed (only to be killed off later after surviving... ouch, poor Hobi). All of the characters feel like they impact the plot, which is very, very good. It's easy as K-pop fanfic writers for us to put members of K-pop groups in a story for sake of having them there, and then they fall into the background and don't do anything for the plot, but you do a good job utilizing all of them and making them feel important, so good job!

The deductions come from the pacing issues that I'll explain in the next section, but like the last section, I'm still bringing it up here to explain where the deductions come from so you know and aren't left wondering. However, I will explain in detail in the next section, so I'll let future me explain it.

Overall, the plot is very interesting and provides a solid murder mystery.

Pacing: 8/15. The pacing is overall okay when it comes to the general rate that character information is revealed. I think you introduce the character and plot information, like Y/n's involvement, at good times, not making the pacing so slow that it takes forever just to reach one reveal. Every chapter there is plot development, and nothing feels like fluff in that regard. You don't spend too much time trying to force in things that don't matter, which is a common error I see, so good job. That being said, I do think the pacing could use some tweaks to help the information feel more impactful and to make the plot feel more fleshed out, and I'll explain that below.

The pacing could benefit from slowing down to include more descriptions and scene setting before getting into the scene. For example, in chapters 4 and 5, we switch to see Hoseok for a few lines of dialogue with little to no description each time, which is a bit too snappy, if that makes sense. I would suggest slowing down and setting the scene in that moment. Where is Hoseok? You don't need to say specifically where, but I mean some descriptions of where we are physically, even if we don't know the exact place. Like maybe he's tied up to a chair in a warehouse in chapter 5, which gives us a bit more to work with, and it also slows down the scene so we can process what's happening. As readers, we need time to digest what's happening, and when a scene is mostly dialogue if not all dialogue, we read it in a handful of seconds and don't have the time needed to process what's going on in a meaningful way. So that's why I suggest slowing down and really fleshing out the scenes. I suggest establishing the environment and where we are as soon as possible any time you're writing a new scene. If we don't know where the characters are (again, doesn't have to be a specific location, like 123 Red Street, but I mean describing the environment; i.e., if they're in a forest, describe what the forest looks like), we don't know what to imagine. In simpler terms, if we don't know where the characters are, we can't imagine them. What we'd imagine is the characters standing in a white void since we don't know where they are, which can be distracting for the reader and make it hard to process what's going on.

So, in summary, I would recommend establishing location as soon as realistically possible in a scene, and also spending more time on describing the scenes since even when we do know where they are, it's a little vague in terms of where we are since there are few descriptions. And, by the way, I'm not saying you need to add paragraphs upon paragraphs of descriptions, either. Like I mentioned in the characters section, I liked how you had mentions of specific details, like Lia's breakfast, without spending so much time on it. So what I'm suggesting is just adding about 1-8 sentences here and there to help flesh out the environment more so we know what's going on and we can better ground ourselves in the scenes. It'll also help us remember the information you're giving us better because we'll have more time to process it. I hope everything I said made sense!

Creativity & Descriptions: 8.5/15. There are some interesting creative decisions that I liked throughout the narrative. For example, I'm a sucker for onomatopoeia, so I liked how you used it throughout, like the tring tring of the phone in the first chapter to disrupt the couple's peace. I know that may seem like a small thing, but the little details matter, and I liked how you sprinkled figurative language throughout your story.

I also like the plot twists and how you gave every K-pop idol present in the story a role, like I mentioned in the plot section. When it comes to the creative side of the story, I think you have a good idea that will keep people interested in reading. I think the Y/n twist in particular is a good one, and I liked her dynamic with Jungkook. I thought that was a really creative idea that took me off guard, and it's rare for stories these days to do that (I read so many books that at this point, even a well-made twist is something I can predict; and that's not a brag or anything, I just read a lot of books, lol, so when you manage to catch me off guard, that's cool). So when it comes to the creativity, it's great! I just have some suggestions for the descriptions.

Like I mentioned in the previous section, you could benefit from slowing down to have more descriptions. There aren't many descriptions in the story, and of what's there, most of the descriptions are more actions instead of straight descriptions describing the environments, characters, emotions, etc., so I would recommend having more descriptions, that way it's easier for the readers to imagine themselves in the environments and imagine what the characters look like. Of course we have a general idea of what they look like since they're based off K-pop idols, but for books, it's always a good idea to still describe the characters even if they have real life references since we still want to be able to imagine them. For example, consider describing Namjoon's dimples, or Taehyung's fashion. You can also give personality through physical appearances since people often dress similarly to their personality. Like I liked how Lia chose to wear Jungkook's hoodie. That was a nice, small detail that said a lot about the trust she has in him and their relationship status. Consider adding more details like that when it comes to their appearances. I hope that makes sense!

The last thing I'll mention before moving into the worldbuilding is to consider using far less exclamation marks (!). Back when I was in 7th grade (I'm making myself sound old by saying that, I know), I had an English teacher that said something that's stuck with me to this day: "You should only use exclamation marks for situations like 'I'm pregnant!'." The reason he said this is because exclamation marks are A) telling over showing, B) very dramatic, and C) can come off as a lazy way to try and incorporate emotion into the text. Every chapter, there are a lot of exclamation marks, and keep in mind that for things like exclamation marks, ellipses (...), emphasis words like "just" and "still," etc., the more you use them, the less impact they have later, so that's why I suggest downsizing on them. They can also make the writing come off as a bit too overly enthusiastic, so that's another reason why I recommend downsizing. And when I say telling over showing, I mean that exclamation marks tell the audience the emotion. Telling over showing is necessary in every story, hence why it's okay to use things like exclamation marks and adverbs, though I recommend downsizing on them so those telling over showing moments are more effective and don't feel like they make up a majority of the story. Readers like to draw their own conclusions, and when you tell the emotion instead of show it, we have less room to imagine and think since you're telling us exactly what to think. So, to summarize that long paragraph, I recommend downsizing on the exclamation marks! (pun intended by using a ! there, haha).

Overall, the story idea is creative and does a good job engaging the reader, there could just be some tweaks to the descriptions.

Worldbuilding: 6/10. The world feels very interesting to learn about. I really like the concept of the Lee family and also the police department. I like how you give us the specific location of Seoul since a lot of fanfics I read don't even have a location (you would be surprised just how many times I've read a fanfic and completely forgotten if the country let alone city they were in was ever mentioned). So I appreciate that we know where we are in the world, which made for a more imaginative reading experience. Worldbuilding is one of the four core storytelling elements (alongside plot, characters, and themes), and it's my second favorite one (behind characters), so I really like how you gave so much detail to the Lee family. Worldbuilding is more than just environments, it's also the rules, families, politics, etc. present within the fictional setting, and the Lee family was the highlight for me, but I also enjoyed seeing the chaos of the police department and the pressure put on them to succeed, which was shown well through Namjoon and Lia's characters. So great job!

When it comes to critiques, I don't want to sound like a broken record saying the same things again, so I won't go too into detail here about the descriptions again. Like I mentioned before, it could just be interesting to see more of the world. Sometimes we're told the general location, like an old factory or the police department, but it could be interesting to see more descriptions of the locations, characters (what they look like, I mean), and environments. In some chapters, like chapter 12, you experiment more with descriptions, and I think that's great! I liked how you did a little more and gave more environmental and emotional descriptions, so I encourage you to do more of that throughout the whole story and continue to be more specific with your descriptions. General descriptions can work of course, but the more specific you are, the more people are going to remember it. If you make a description saying Jungkook is tall and then a description saying he has a mole under his lower lip, people are more likely to remember the mole because it's more specific, not to mention they'll have a more interesting time picturing him. Being tall is general while a mole is more unique and specific. So the same can be applied to environments. It's fine to say things like a house is white, or it's empty, or it has decorations, though consider being more specific, like are there cracks on the walls, what kind of decorations are there, what the soundscape of the area is, etc.

My father (a writer) gave me a piece of advice I'll never forget. When I was younger, like an early teen, I showed him a piece of my writing where the main character was eating dinner, and he asked me "What is your character eating? Is he eating tomato soup? Spaghetti? Is he having breakfast for dinner with eggs and toast? If you take a moment to be more specific, we as readers can relate to your character more and learn more about their likes and dislikes." I paraphrased of course, but the general gist is the same. Taking that extra second to be a little more specific, like you do with Lia's breakfast, could go a long way, so consider branching out with the descriptions more and including more while also including more specific descriptions instead of just general descriptions. That can help the world feel more well-rounded, easier to visualize, and interesting. I hope that makes sense!

Dialogue: 8/15. The dialogue is okay and does what it needs to to keep the story moving, and I overall enjoyed reading the dialogue, though I do have some recommendations to help smoothen the dialogue out and make it more engaging.

What is holding the dialogue back is the frequent grammar and formatting errors. I'll explain the grammar errors in the following section, so we'll save that for later, but the dialogue errors I will explain here. When it comes to dialogue tags, they are done incorrectly. Here's an example from chapter 10:

" Oh ! I see...and you?"

She asked looking at Somi.

When using a tag, it needs to be on the same line as the dialogue, otherwise it can get really confusing for the readers really fast. Also, the dialogue tag always needs to be lowercase unless it is a proper noun (like Y/n since that's a name). So, here is where the tag should be and what it should look like:

"Oh! I see... and you?" she asked, looking at Somi.

I fixed the spacing and punctuation errors as well, but the main focus here is the "she asked" is now lowercase and placed next to the dialogue. Since a dialogue tag is a continuation of the dialogue (it's modifying the dialogue and an addition to said dialogue, therefore it is a continuation of the dialogue), that means it is not a new sentence, which is why it is lowercase unless it is a proper noun and why it's placed on the same line rather than put below or above the dialogue. I hope that makes sense!

I would also recommend making sure every time a new person is speaking, you give them their own space to speak. This didn't happen as often so it's not as big of a deal, but there were times you would have more than one person speaking in the same paragraph. Here's a random example not from the text but just to show what it looks like: "Hi," Jungkook said. "Hi," Y/n said.

It should be:

"Hi," Jungkook said.

"Hi," Y/n said.

This is so readers don't get confused and can naturally follow along with the flow of the dialogue. Like I said, you don't do it too often, but it's still worth mentioning since I did notice it quite a few times throughout the narrative. I hope that makes sense, too.

Like I mentioned in the creativity section, you could also benefit from downsizing on the usage of exclamation marks since there are a lot of them every chapter, and a lot of them appear in the dialogue, so I would recommend downsizing to make the exclamation mark usages feel more impactful (since the less you use, the more impactful they become).

Another thing is really small since I think you only did it a handful of times (though I was not counting, I just noted it a couple times), but I would recommend avoiding using emojis in dialogue, like in chapter one there's an emoji in the dialogue. I say this because people can't speak emojis, so when you have an emoji in dialogue (not text, spoken dialogue; using emojis in texts is fine), it comes off as a bit awkward since we don't know how to read it. We can't imagine people speaking emojis, you know what I mean? So that's why I suggest avoiding it. I hope that makes sense!

Lastly, there could also be more description around the dialogue to make the dialogue more impactful. I am of the belief that a story is not dialogue but rather what leads up to the dialogue, which means that the actions and descriptions around the dialogue are what make the dialogue feel powerful and engaging. So I recommend having more descriptions of body language, facial expressions, their voices, etc. to give the dialogue more weight. I.e., maybe during a tense moment, someone's voice gets scratchy. Another way is to consider the positioning of characters. Maybe one character is scared, so that character speaks in a quieter tone and stands further away, naturally going more toward the corners. A more confident, assertive character might have a louder voice and stand much closer to the person they're speaking to. Maybe even too close (i.e., Jungkook in your story might fit this description). So those are a few ways to make the dialogue more engaging, but I encourage you to play around with it. The beauty of writing is that you can really do whatever you want and experiment, so I encourage you to experiment and find what works best for you!

Overall, the dialogue has its strengths, especially when people like Namjoon and Y/n are interacting as I enjoyed their interactions very much, though there could be some tweaks to the presentation and grammar to help make the dialogue even stronger.

Spelling & Grammar: 5/10. The spelling and grammar could use major improvement so readers have an easier time digesting the story, and your intended message for said story is clear. However, this is nothing to be discouraged over, so please don't be! Technical writing, while difficult, is the easiest to correct since there are (mostly) clear rights and wrongs when it comes to grammar (though keep in mind there are a lot of exceptions and cases where you can bend or even completely break English grammar for sake of storytelling; i.e., poetry breaks traditional grammar rules all the time). So I'll give general tips to improve grammar while also breaking down some of the grammar errors in the story! Let's begin!

To generally improve your grammar, there are a few paths you can take, if you are not taking them already. If you are, please feel free to disregard this and skip to the part where I talk about the specific errors in the piece.

I would recommend using a free grammar editing software—such as Grammarly, QuillBot, and/or ProWritingAid—to help with keeping the writing fluid and easy to read. I know grammar editors don't appeal to everyone (I personally don't use them much), but they could be more helpful to some than to others, so maybe they're for you, or maybe they're not, and either one is okay! Writing is a journey of learning what does and doesn't work for you, after all. Heaven knows it took me a decade to find my writing style and find my grove. But that aside, Grammarly is okay with things like spelling and punctuation (though you have to guess what punctuation to use; Grammarly will normally just highlight the area but not tell you if it needs a comma, dash, semicolon, etc. unless you have the premium plan), QuillBot is the most aggressive grammar checker (which can lead to some errors, but it can be good if you're looking for something more aggressive), and ProWritingAid is best for word choice and ensuring you aren't repeating the same words (i.e., walk, run, look, etc.) too often. So it depends on which checker personally appeals to you, but there are certainly more out there. Those are just the three I'm familiar with, so that's why I mention them. You can also cross-reference where you paste your text into one, mark down some of the errors, and paste it into another checker to see if the other checker is marking the same errors. If more than one grammar checker is marking the same errors, the odds are, it's probably correct (not always, but it's a little more likely). I hope that makes sense!

But if grammar checkers don't appeal to you, no worries; there are plenty of other ways to improve grammar over time. You could also read your text out loud and/or use a text-to-speech, or TTS, generator to have the text read back to you in a robot voice. I personally use TTS, and that's what improved my grammar so much. I catch a lot more errors using TTS than I ever did just reading the text back in my head. It also helps with making the dialogue sound natural. If you read dialogue out loud, you can hear if it sounds like something someone would really say or not, so that's my #1 tip for dialogue: when in doubt, read it out loud it out. If you're interested in using a TTS generator, you can go to Google and search them up. A bunch of them will pop up, and a lot of software (like Word) have built-in speech bots to read the text back to you.

The last general grammar tip I'll give is looking at online resources. For example, the Grammarly Blog has general grammar tips that I've used on occasion to remind myself of certain grammar rules. So those are a couple ways to improve overall grammar. With all that being said, I'll show a few of the grammar errors present throughout the story below.

Let's start with spelling since that's the easiest. There are some spelling errors present throughout the narrative, like Seoul being spelled as Seol, and there being a lot of capitalization errors I'll mention in the next paragraph.

There are also some spacing errors, which aren't big deals but still worth mentioning. You'll have extra spaces when they're not needed between quotation marks and words, same with punctuation marks and words. I.e., " What ! Another Murder!" (chap 1). See how there are extra spaces between the quotation mark and the what and the what and the exclamation mark? It should be: "What! Another murder!" According to CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style, the manuscript writing format), there should be only one space between words and punctuation. Other writing styles, like AP and MLA, also say this, in case you were curious to look into the different writing styles. I also lowercased the "murder" since it isn't a proper noun, which leads me to my next point where make sure when you have a noun that isn't proper (in this case, the "murder" isn't proper), it is lowercase since only proper nouns or words starting sentences get the first letter capitalized. For example, you often capitalize cops as Cops, but cops is a general noun and not a proper noun in the scenarios you use it in.

I would recommend using more punctuation as things like commas, semicolons, colons, etc. are rare, and I would especially recommend using more commas and using grammar editing software to help identify where commas need to go. For example, when using an -ing verb after a dialogue tag, you need a comma after the dialogue tag. For example, from chapter 10: She said fixing the small device... It should be: She said, fixing the small device...

There were also the dialogue errors I mentioned before, but since I already explained them, I won't go into detail about them here other than to mention them since they do count as grammar errors as well.

So those are some of the general errors I noticed, and I would recommend tweaking them whenever possible. I hope everything I said made sense!

Title/blurb/cover: 6.5/10. The Hidden Cassowary is quite a unique title, to say the least. It's safe to say I've never seen it before, and I honestly forgot what a cassowary even was until I Googled it and facepalmed myself for forgetting what it was. It's an interesting title that makes me curious to see what the story is about, and the capitalization of the title is correct and fits CMOS standards. No criticisms!

When it comes to the blurb, it's a bit tough to judge because there are only three core sentences giving a glimpse into the story surrounded by quotes I assume from the story (I judge this section before reading the book, so that's why I'm assuming and can't know for sure). I would recommend having a more cohesive blurb, and by that I mean the quotes are mostly unneeded since they don't say much, if anything, about the story, and the jumping back and forth between the core sentences and the quotes with no context means it's a little confusing and hard to follow, so by the time I finish reading the blurb, I feel like I don't know much more about the story than when I initially clicked on it, if that makes sense. So that's why I'd recommend some tweaks where you focus more on describing what happens in the story in paragraph format rather than sprinkling a few sentences between quotes. A lot of people—myself included—will use quotes within their blurbs, and that's fine! It's not inherently a bad thing to use quotes, though what I'd recommend is maybe consider downsizing. Maybe have what you feel is your most impactful and eye-catching quote and have it be the opening, and then dive into the blurb. I do this a bit with both general lines and quotes, so if you're curious to see examples, most of my recent books have an opening line before diving into the blurb. I'm far from the best at blurbs, so I'm not saying I'm great at them, but they're just examples of what I mean when I say opening with a quote and then diving into the blurb. But anyway, that aside (which I hope it makes sense; I know I tend to ramble), I think the blurb has potential to be very strong, it could just use some tweaks. Please let me know if you have any questions about that!

The cover is nice! I like the black and white and the photo of Namkook used. It definitely sets the tone of a crime drama. They look very cop-like in that photo, and considering that's what the book is about, it works out! I like the font used and how it's a black outline with the white cassowary underneath. Really cute! The only minor critique I have is it could be interesting to see the text moved up a bit so it's not overlapping with the top of Namjoon's head, simply because there's a lot of space between the top of his head and the top of the screen, so there's space to move it up, if desired. So it could be interesting to see that moved up a bit, but I'm not a graphic designer, so maybe it looks terrible moved up, who knows. That aside, I otherwise like the cover and thought you did a great job with it!

Total: 59/100.

I Wish For Another Life by emilypoole977

Review:

Characters: 12/15. The main character in this story is Namjoon alongside some side characters who pop up throughout, but for the purpose of this review, I'd like to focus on Namjoon since he's the character with the most screentime. Namjoon is the emotional core of the story, and I think that works quite well. Namjoon is a compelling character who has strong emotions and a unique relationship with those emotions that make him so intriguing. Happiness' role in the story as a personification was really cool to see, and I believe I've praised that in the past, but it remains true to this day that Happiness is a nice character that I enjoy seeing personified here, and I like how Happiness interacts with Namjoon by the end.

Namjoon himself is pretty solid, too, with his mental health being the central point of the narrative that was fun to follow. Well, I don't mean fun in a psychopathic way, of course. It's sad to see Namjoon sad. But I mean fun in an engaging way, haha. Did I sound crazy there for a second? Well, anyway, the point is that Namjoon is overall well-written and does a good job keeping the readers' attention for the whole runtime of the narrative.

The only deductions comes from some areas where I felt the emotions could have been a bit more fleshed out and also some dialogue errors that made the dialogue a bit awkward at times, but I'll explain those two things in their respective sections. Otherwise, I thought Namjoon was a good character with a compelling story.

Plot: 8/10. The idea for the plot is very good. The narrative follows Kim Namjoon through a series of different lives, showing him what could be versus what he already had. Namjoon learns to value his own life and come to term with his emotions, no matter how "pretty" or "ugly" they may be, and he learns that not everything needs to be positive to be beautiful. Every emotion makes up Kim Namjoon, and he goes on to try and embrace them, even when they hurt.

I think that's a unique plot that uses the "alternate lives" trope in an interesting way I don't believe I've seen done like this before. AKA: it takes a storyline that's become pretty common in modern entertainment and makes it unique and cool, so I think you did a great job with that, and I also think it was a smart decision to have the focus be on Namjoon and mostly only Namjoon, with some side characters sprinkled here and there. That made it easier to really digest the theme of the story, so overall, you have a good balance here.

The only deductions come from some pacing things I'll mention in the next section, but I otherwise thought the plot had a solid idea that was very unique.

Pacing: 10/15. The overall pacing of the narrative is solid. It does a good job carrying the reader from point A to point B, revealing the main plot concept by the end with Happiness and the last two chapters really wrapping it up. When it comes to the structure of the story, I think it's good and shows the emotional arc of Namjoon in a coherent, entertaining way that I think readers will really enjoy, especially BTS fans who know a lot about Namjoon and his personality.

The only deductions come from how I felt it could be slowed down in some areas to flesh out the emotions and world more, such as the segment with the ab/se. It goes by really fast, and it could be interesting to see Namjoon reflecting on this part more and reflecting on if another Namjoon could live this life. Seeing as Namjoon is such a selfless person, it could be interesting to slow down during this part and really have him reflect on what he's had to go through and how many other people had to go through it, too. I feel this is the most impactful of the alternate lives because it features Joon getting physically harmed, so it could be beneficial to flesh that part out more and consider being more descriptive and vivid with it. I'm not saying you have to describe the actual ab/se in explicit detail as I know that's a difficult topic to write about, though consider the aftermath and slowing down to go through that more, if that makes sense.

It could also be interesting to slow down in chapter 2 as well to flesh out how Namjoon is making his family feel more since it started off really happy in chapter 1 and then now we're being told Namjoon's depressed again, which is fine, though it could be interesting to slow that segment down and see more of Namjoon's turn to depression and see how it's impacting his family rather than being told it. That being said, I did like how Hari had him staying in a hotel. That's a small thing, but it was nice to see Hari being emotionally mature and putting her daughter first.

Overall, the pacing was good and showed the character emotions and plot at a steady rate, it could have just benefitted from slowing down to flesh out these ideas a bit more in some areas, but it's otherwise solid pacing.

Creativity & Descriptions: 10/15. Creatively, I'm sure I've said this in the past, but your ideas are always cool. This is a very creative story that is emotionally profound, exploring Namjoon's emotions through different lifelines and the personification of emotions. Like I mentioned in the plot section, this is just a fundamentally good idea that has creativity oozing from it. Along with that, the alternate lifelines chosen were creative, too, starting more tame with a wife and child lifeline and then slowly descending until we even get a baby lifeline, which is wild. So everything chosen here was really good and made for an entertaining read.

There are also some cool moments throughout with the descriptions, like chapter 5 in particular does a good job bringing Namjoon's emotions to life by giving us an up close and personal look at what he's thinking and feeling. I believe this chapter is the most in-depth about his feelings, and it really shows in the descriptions and how you make Namjoon feel very fleshed out in that regard.

Critique-wise, most of what I have is what I've mentioned in the past about considering being more specific with descriptions and considering including more. Like I mentioned in the pacing section, you could benefit from spending a little more time with the ab/se storyline since it was really interesting (and I don't mean that in a psychopathic way, I swear-) to focus more on the emotions of such a highly traumatic life a Namjoon is living. It's an intriguing storyline covering a lesser talked about subject (male ab/se victims), so it could be interesting to see more of that. When it comes to the descriptions themselves, you could benefit from being more specific, like in chapter 1, it's just said that Namjoon goes to "the building." I'm not saying describe it in extreme detail, but maybe just a name of what the building is so we get a hint at what that Namjoon's job is? Since the purpose of the story is to explore different lives Namjoon could have, seeing what job that Namjoon has could be a huge insight into what kind of person he is, and it could also relate to our Namjoon's struggle; maybe the job isn't for him, and he doesn't want to be stuck doing it the rest of his life. So those are just a couple things to consider for future reference, but the overall creativity in particular is very good.

Worldbuilding: 7.5/10. I believe I've mentioned it in past reviews and probably also in this one (I write reviews out of order, lol), but the concept is really good, making for an interesting start to the world. The world is more than just the physical environments, it's also the concepts and how the characters interact with the concepts, and I think the concept of Happiness and Namjoon seeing alternate lives is a really cool one. I think when it comes to the concepts of the world, you nailed them. I also said earlier that the specific lives you chose to display were cool, too, and that applies here as well since that does factor into the worldbuilding. So all in all, you did a good job with this section.

Like I mentioned before, the only thing is there could be more specifics given to the world through its environments since there were many vague moments that could have been expanded on more, and in general there could have been some moments where the story slowed down to flesh out the ideas more since all the ideas present here are super interesting. But other than those things that I've mentioned before, the worldbuilding is good and deserves a high score.

Dialogue: 10/15. The dialogue throughout the story works for the narrative, and I liked many of the creative decisions, like choosing to have a segment where Namjoon is a baby, and all his dialogue is just baby babble while he tries to figure out how to communicate. So I thought the dialogue did a good job at feeling unique and fleshed out, giving the reader a diverse set of emotions to see through the dialogue, and I like how you've started to include more happening around the dialogue instead of it being almost exclusively dialogue. It gives the dialogue more weight, and it makes scenes feel more realistic and emotional as a result, so I overall think you did a good job with this section, hence the high score.

I would recommend not using actions as tags, and by that I mean things like "he chuckled" or "he smiled" used as dialogue tags. I say this because it's a bit unnatural, as dialogue tags tag dialogue, not people, so saying something like "he chuckled" could come across as unnatural, and I also recommend avoiding them since there are so many alternatives, such as:

He chuckled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a chuckle.

"Dialogue." He chuckled. "More dialogue."

Those are a few alternatives, but all of them keep the tag a speaking action and keeping the person action separate but still present. I hope that makes sense.

There are times where there are spoken lines but no quotation marks around the spoken lines. For example: Anyway, now that Kim's here, let's get this meeting started, said Mr. Seok. For this sentence, you need an open quote in front of Anyway, and an end quote after the comma/started. So: "Anyway, now that Kim's here, let's get this meeting started," said Mr. Seok. (all from chapter 1). In the same chapter, there's this: "Joon, you know people are jealous of your dimples, she teased. Here you're missing the end quote, so I recommend adding it.

There are also some grammar and spelling issues within the dialogue and the tags, but I'll talk more about grammar next section, and I won't talk your ear off about spelling since I know you'd probably prefer me to talk about other things than the spelling, but I still wanted to mention it since it does factor into the score.

Overall, the dialogue does what it needs to to propel the story forward and give focus to Namjoon, who is the star of the show. There could be some tweaks to the presentation of the dialogue, but it otherwise works for the story.

Spelling & Grammar: 6.5/10. The general grammar is overall an improvement and doesn't have any really consistent major errors, more inconsistent things and a few minor errors that build up, alongside spelling errors, which are the only real major consistent errors I noticed. So this section is mostly going to be pointing out a few small things and inconsistencies rather than major errors, since things like the punctuation were overall okay and did what they needed to for the story to help the reader read it smoothly.

I'm not going to talk your ear off about grammar and spelling since I know you're aware of it, and I'd rather focus on narrative things than grammatical things, and I have a feeling you'd prefer that, too; however, for sake of the review, I will just briefly mention where the deductions come from.

There are frequent spelling errors throughout, but again, I know you hate spelling, so I'm not going to talk your ear off about it other than to just say that there were frequent errors that do factor into the score.

Grammatically, it has some errors but not too many, with the most frequent I saw being missing end punctuation or incorrect end punctuation, like in the prologue you'd have "Namjoon," instead of "Namjoon." In the context of the text, the "Namjoon" line is just that line with no tags after it, hence why it needs a period/full stop instead of a comma. There are some times where end punctuation is missing, like this from chapter 1: "You're going to be late." asked Hari

What I suggest: "You're going to be late," asked/said Hari.

Like I mentioned in the dialogue section, there are times there weren't any quotation marks around spoken dialogue, so I would recommend making sure anything spoken out loud is put in quotes, and if you have lines inside Namjoon's head, I would recommend putting them in italics.

This is very minor, but I would recommend spelling out numbers at least from 1-9 if not 1-99. Like instead of 3 days, consider three days. I say this because a numeral in the text is a bit distracting, and it's smoother to read it as three days rather than 3 days. Maybe even just looking at it here you may see how much smoother/easier three days is on the eyes as opposed to 3 days. It's a minor thing, but I recommend spelling out those kinds of numbers. I also say this because sometimes you do spell the numbers out and other times you don't, so I recommend a bit more consistency there.

Overall, as you can see, there's nothing crazy major that's going to break a reader's comprehension of the story, though there could be some tweaks to help the text be a bit more fluid. I hope that makes sense.

Title/blurb/cover: 7.5/10. The title is I wish For Another Life, which sums up the story exactly. I plugged it into my SEO title tracker, and it has a great score of a 70/100, which may not sound amazing, but that's actually pretty dang good. It's a green score, and anything green = awesome, so good job there. The only thing I would recommend is tweaking the capitalization to better align with the CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style, which is the typical manuscript format) guidelines. It's currently capitalized like this: I wish For Another Life. I would recommend: I Wish for Another Life. It's a minor change, but I recommend it to stronger align with Chicago's guidelines. Overall, the title is good and works well for the story.

The blurb is pretty good! I didn't notice any SPAG errors, and it sums up the story pretty well, telling the readers exactly what to expect and why they should read it. I overall think it's good, so I don't have much to say about it other than you did a good job with it. No critiques!

Lastly, the cover. Like I mentioned in the title section of this category, I would recommend tweaking the title since the cover has the title capitalized correctly, so it looks a little odd to have the official typed title be spelled slightly differently than the one on the cover. However, that aside, I like the cover. It's simple but tells the story of what Namjoon is going to go through. It's a cute cover that gets the job done without overcomplicating it.

The only minor critique I have aside from adjusting the capitalization so it matches is I'm not a huge fan of the author's name having the black border around it. Maybe it looks better in the editor than it does on my screen, but I feel there is a little disconnect since there's the cover credit in all white, then the title in white and black, and then the author's name in white and black. Visually, it could be more cohesive to have the author's name simply be white without the black border, or have the top text have a black border like the other two just to create a little more cohesion. But, otherwise, I like the cover!

Total: 71.5/100.

Entangled Emotions by sugararmy07

Review:

Characters: 10/15. Hana and Jungkook are the two main characters in the story and the ones I will be focusing on for the sake of this review, as the only other characters, like Suho, are mostly there as plot devices rather than whole characters, so I will focus on Hana and Jungkook, which I'm sure you'd prefer as well.

For Hana and Jungkook, they carry the theme of regret and mistakes on their shoulders, with their characters acting as vessels for said theme. Seeing them clash with Jungkook begging to be let back into her life while Hana attempts to move on and sort her emotions out was interesting to see play out. It was a unique twist on this otherwise really common story idea, and I'm glad you didn't try and go all the way into the cliche zone. AKA: I'm glad you put interesting ideas in there that gave the characters more intrigue.

I'm glad Hana was a dancer with dreams, too. It was an interesting contrast to see Hana, who has so much of her own person, and Jungkook, who's personality is mostly smoking and Hana. It's a unique contrast to see the depth of Hana when compared to the more laid-back Jungkook (in terms of how much we learn about him). She has a genuine future, while Jungkook sees his future as her. It works well for the themes, and it's interesting how Jungkook has an arc where he learns there's more to life than Hana, and he needs to find what that is for himself. And, of course, I'm happy Hana got to move on and find more for herself, too.

The only deductions come from the dialogue since there is frequent awkward dialogue, though I'll explain that in the dialogue section in far more detail.

Overall, the character work is there mostly for the theme, but it works well in that regard, making the reader engaged and ready to read what comes next.

Plot: 8/10. Like I mentioned in the previous section, the characters are vessels for the theme, and the plot is the same way. This is a theme-driven story, so the plot is simple: Jungkook makes a bet to make Hana fall in love with him, and Hana finds out about it after Jungkook has fallen in love with her. It's a common plotline, but it is executed in a more interesting way by having it be a short story where Hana dumps Jungkook's ass and goes on to live her life, having a happy ending for her but also kind of for Jungkook, too, where he accepts it and moves on.

I'm actually really glad he got a happy ending. While he never should have taken the bet, and that was stupid, it was a bit different where he forgot about the bet before he even dated her, and he fell in love with her months after the bet initial got placed, so it wasn't like he was lying to her for their relationship or anything. Even their friendship was formed without the bet in mind, so all of it was real, and he didn't date her with ill-intentions. Of course, he should have been honest and told her about the bet at some point since they were together almost a year, but I honestly can't bring myself to hate him, and no, it's not because he's Jungkook. He genuinely took accountability and handed over the money for the bet before Hana even found out, so it's clear he felt bad and tried to redeem himself before she even found out, so it wasn't a case of he felt remorse because he got caught; no, he genuinely felt remorse prior to getting caught and tried to take steps to fix it. But seriously, Jeon, c'mon, you should've told her. I can almost guarantee if he told her and she didn't hear it from Suho, they would have probably stayed together due to his sincerity and openness. At the same time, I can't blame Hana for how she reacted. Yeah, she should have heard him out instead of just slapping him, especially when Suho is kinda known as a douche, but at the same time, she thought their entire relationship was a lie, and that's a whole year of her life wasted, so I'd say her entangled emotions (see what I did there?) were justified.

But that's just a random Raven thought. That actually has literally nothing to do with the score, I just felt like sharing my two cents, lol, but, hey, if you're getting me to type whole paragraphs about my thoughts without it even impacting the score, then that's a good sign you're keeping me engaged, and that absolutely impacts the plot and leads me to my next mini point: it's engaging and kept my attention for all five chapters, which goes without saying that that's awesome.

The only deductions come from some pacing issues and inconsistencies with the worldbuilding, but I'll explain them in their respective sections.

Overall, the plot works for the story and elevates the themes well! I enjoyed the ending in particular and thought it did a good job wrapping up the themes.

Pacing: 12/15. The pacing throughout the story is good and carries the plot from point A to point B smoothly, making it feel like I understood the overall plot and characters well. The chapters ended at good places and, speaking of, the story ending felt like it ended where it needed to, with Hana moving on and accepting what she needed to to gain a life more suited for her. The pacing is all in all good and keeps the story moving.

Critique-wise, the main thing is be careful with the opening and being vague rather than mysterious. By that I mean, there is no reason to conceal Jungkook's identity in the beginning. You refer to him only as "he" for the first part of the story, but it comes off as vague rather than mysterious. You can establish Jungkook is Jungkook early, preferably as early as possible. This persists in the second section, even after his name is revealed, where he's frequently referred to as "he" even when a lot of other boys are around him, so it became confusing to know who was who. For example: "Exactly! I'm craving some hard challenges too," he said. There were three boys mentioned by the time that line appears, so it raises the question which "he" is talking here? It can come off as really confusing, and it's important to have a smooth transition into the story in the first chapter so readers can stay engaged and decide to continue reading. I hope that makes sense!

Overall, the pacing for the story is good, as you can tell by the high score, it could just use some tweaks to the opening to eliminate confusion.

Creativity & Descriptions: 8/15. Like I mentioned in the plot section, this is a pretty typical plotline, with the plot following a bet a BTS member, Jungkook, makes. It's especially common for Jungkook. In fact, I got a story with 50k reads about the same exact thing at the top of my recs while reading this story. That being said, I'm someone who believes it's not about the story idea, it's about how it's executed, and like I said before, this plot idea you have that's so common is something you take and spin in a different way, showing the female lead actually breaking up with the male lead and not forgiving him just because he's Jungkook. So I appreciated that you took it in that direction, and for those reasons, I think the story is really creative! You experimented with a cliche plot and made it feel more unique, so great job!

Description-wise, I like many of the concepts you have in your descriptions, and I appreciate what you're trying to do with them. For example, I appreciate that you implemented the five senses here and there by describing things like warmth and sounds (i.e., footsteps in the hallway). So I encourage you to keep doing that as the five senses are what make the descriptions sound so vivid and make them stand out more.

That being said, there could be some tweaks to the descriptions. For one, some of the descriptions begin to repeat too much, such as in chapter 1, I lost count of how many times the boys smirked, and I would recommend downsizing on the smirks since it got to a point where it was almost every line where a smirk was mentioned.

While on the topic of repetition, be careful with how you start your sentences, as you use a lot of pronouns to start them, like he and she. Consider diversifying the start of sentences because overusing pronouns as sentence starters can get unengaging and not as fun to read. I encourage you to play around with sentence starts, as those are a lot of fun to play with, and I'm sure you'll come up with awesome things. You're Honey, after all.

Another thing is be careful with becoming over-reliant on the pictures, since it did feel like the pictures were being used for substitutes for descriptions at times, especially when Hana's apartment was shown twice with the same picture: once in chap 2, once in chap 3, but you don't need the same picture twice. This also becomes apparent in chapter 4, where there's a major inconsistency with what the pictures depict and what you end up describing, but I'll go over that in the worldbuilding section.

The last thing is to be careful about forcing adverbs. Adverbs are telling over showing, and there's nothing wrong with using telling over showing (every story has it to some extent, so I don't agree with the "always show, never tell" crowd), but I recommend downsizing where possible or at least choosing them very carefully. For example, in the beginning, Jungkook is described as elegantly pulling out a cigarette. How do you elegantly pull out a cigarette? Did he twirl it or something? That's the first thing that comes to mind. I can understand maybe trying to create a contrast between the dangers of smoking and the elegance Jungkook has, but this is really the only moment in the story that does this, and I feel there may be better words to use that aren't elegantly. That's a more minor thing that isn't a big deal, but still worth mentioning.

Overall, the story does a great job taking an idea that's oversaturated on Wattpad and making it more unique. There could be some tweaks to the descriptions, but there are still good concepts in there, and I like how the five senses were sprinkled throughout.

Worldbuilding: 7/10. The worldbuilding isn't one of the main focuses of this narrative, which is absolutely okay. Like I've said before, this is a theme-driven narrative, so it makes sense we're not getting a geography lesson here. Though, with that being said, I still enjoy the scenes of the university and the apartment, and I like the diversity of the locations you present despite the limited scope of the plot and the chapters. I like how we were able to see all these different places without any of them feeling forced, and I also enjoyed how you added sound to many of the locations, like the dance studio and hallway leading to Y/n's apartment. AKA: I appreciate the attention to detail!

Critique-wise, I do have something about the apartment. The apartment's location is a bit confusing. The picture we're shown of the apartment and the descriptions seem to show it's an indoor apartment with halls (a typical apartment). So, not a house, and she doesn't live on the first floor it doesn't seem (though that wouldn't change much anyway). So if she's living in an indoor apartment with hotel-like halls, as seen in the picture in chapters 2 & 3, then how is Jungkook outside in the rain in chapter 4 while also being right outside her door? Her door isn't outside, it's inside a hallway, but the text says "He was sitting at her doorstep," and he's shown as shivering and in rain. There's no physical way for Jungkook to be both outside in the world and outside her door, if that makes sense; he would just be inside a hallway if he were outside her door. Maybe instead she sees him out the window sitting outside the apartment complex instead of outside her actual apartment door. If that's what you meant, the text didn't say that, it said specifically outside her door. I know it may seem like a small thing, but it isn't since it leads to everything that happens after that and is a major plot point. Him being out in the rain is what made her care to let him in anyway, so it is more important than it seems. So, to break this down, I would recommend making sure the descriptions and pictures match up, otherwise it may be confusing for the audience and for the world of the story. Consider tweaking it so she sees him sitting outside the complex instead of her door, that way it makes more sense as to how he's drenched.

The second and final thing is what I mentioned in the previous section about how there's a bit of an over-reliance on pictures as opposed to descriptions, though since I already talked about it there, I won't dwell on it here other than to give it a mention.

Overall, the worldbuilding does what it needs to to elevate the story though could use some more consistency with the pictures versus what's said in the descriptions.

Dialogue: 7/15. The dialogue present throughout the story all in all does what it needs to for the plot to flow out at the solid pace it does, establishing Hana and Jungkook's conflict in a way that makes sense, though the dialogue could use some tweaks to help it sound more natural and engaging.

The main critique I have of the dialogue is a lot of it is unnatural, and the characters speak very similarly, with many of them being overly formal or overly expository. For example, this line from Jungkook: "I wanted to give you a surprise on the day itself, but informed you so that you can take a leave from the university and your part-time job." This is very expository since both Hana and Jungkook know this information, so there's no reason for Jungkook to say it except for the audience's benefit to establish that Hana has a job and they're in university. Either way, the way it's written is overly formal. They're lovers, so there's no reason for them to be so formal with one another. Another example is: "I'm feeling so disgusted." That's from chapter 3, and it feels a little awkward in-context. I feel it'd be more natural to say something along the lines of, "You make me feel sick." Or "You disgust me." Or show the disgust more through descriptions, though you do show the emotions a lot there, so that's not a big deal. So those are a couple of examples of what I mean by the dialogue could be a bit more natural. I hope that makes sense!

I would also recommend using the tag "uttered" less in chapter 1, as it's used quite a few times and is a little awkward. It's not a big deal, and I think that's the only chapter where that tag is overused, but I'd recommend downsizing and considering switching it out for either less dialogue tags or simply "said."

Another thing is I would recommend avoiding using semicolons in dialogue since they're a little unnatural. We as humans don't speak in ways that warrant semicolon usage, so I would recommend downsizing on semicolons in dialogue whenever realistically possible.

In general, there is some awkwardness in the dialogue due to the word order or word usage errors, such as: "Believe me, you wouldn't be able to win the bet." In this context, the wouldn't needs to be "won't." Or: "We knew that it was an easy challenge for the great Jeon Jungkook." Consider: "We knew it was an easy challenge for the great Jeon Jungkook." It's a one word difference, but if you read the original out loud and then the new one out loud, you'll notice the removal of the word "that" makes it flow a lot stronger. For general improvement of dialogue, I strongly recommend reading lines out loud. That's what I do (and/or plug it into a TTS generator), and it's helped me improve my dialogue a lot.

Overall, the dialogue does what it needs to to get the story elevated to where it needs to go, though the lines could use some tweaks to help them sound more natural.

Spelling & Grammar: 7/10. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG for short, is overall okay throughout the narrative, though there are frequent awkward sentences that I mentioned in the previous section, so I won't spend too much time on them here. Instead, I'll mention two quick errors!

This is a small error, but in chapter 1, about 3/4th into it, Hana turns into Y/n with the paragraph starting with "Y/n realized the situation." I believe this is the only time this error happens, so it's no big deal, but I still thought I'd bring it to your attention. Similarly, there are other minor typing errors, like two millions instead of two million. Since you're referring to a specific quantity of millions, you say two million. If you were referring to an unspecified amount, you can say millions, but for specific quantities of millions, you can use *insert number here* million.

The second error I said I would mention is that the word "much" is often misused. For example: "You were so much focused on the completion of the bet that you didn't even give us any update for the last year." Another example: "Is she that much good in bed." The much isn't needed, and you can simply say "Is she that good in bed." For the first example, it could use some general tweaks since it's really unnatural. Consider: "You were so focused on the bet you didn't give us any updates for the last year." This is still a really expository line and could be tweaked or removed either way, but that version is a bit more natural than the original version.

Overall, the SPAG is okay and works for the story!

Title/blurb/cover: 9/10. Entangled Emotions is a good title repeating the e sound and also rolling off the tongue well. There are no capitalization issues, and everything looks good. For those reasons, I have no critiques for the title!

The blurb, like the title, is also good. I don't think it has any SPAG errors, and it tells the reader what the story is going to be about without taking twenty years to do so. It gets to the point, raises some questions, introduces the main characters, and sets the stakes effectively. The only minor thing is I'm not a huge fan of there being four different alternative fonts in this blurb. It's not a big deal, and I don't mind alternative fonts in blurbs, though jumping between four different alternative fonts and the normal font was a bit much, especially since there's one alternative font used for "A short story" and then a different one used for "A Jeon Jungkook fanfiction." I don't even think you need the Jungkook fanfic line considering he's on the cover, in the blurb, and in the title, so it feels a bit unnecessary, same with the short story line since readers can see that in the chapter list and read time, not to mention it's also in the tags. So I feel those two things are really optional. Consider removing them or tweaking the alternative fonts so maybe there are only two different ones instead of four different ones. But other than that small thing, I think the blurb is good, and what matters most is the core of the blurb gets the point across, which it does!

The cover is very good, which is no surprise. I love the E being both Entangled and Emotions, and I like how the end of it curves into the beginning of emotions, making for visual consistency that I enjoyed. I think the subtext is placed in an interesting position, and the author's name being placed at the top works, too. Lastly, the background picture of Jungkook is interesting since it only shows half his face. It could be interesting to see a more emotional background picture considering it's called Entangled Emotions, but the current picture works, so I overall like it and think the cover works well.

Total: 68/100

If You Asked Me To by AprilJester

Review:

Characters: 11/15. The protagonist is Basil, and he is the best character in story, offering great awareness for PTSD. Basil's anxiety, panic, and deep inner turmoil make for an engaging character that I enjoyed reading about. Chapter three started this by showing the deeper emotional conflicts present within Basil, and then this continued later when Basil's secret was potentially at risk because of his job analyzing the new disease and finding a solution.

I was invested in Basil throughout the entire runtime of the story. Basil's love for science growing and sparking here and there was cute to see, too, even though it brought anxiety along with it. The exploration of PTSD was done accurately, in my opinion. I love how Basil is self-doubting, flinching at certain things, always in his own mind, etc.

Critique-wise, my main one is the other characters don't get the same level of depth, description, and personality as Basil, which is okay since they're side characters while Basil is the protagonist, but it could be nice to at least have more descriptions of what they look like, what they sound like, and more showing over telling in terms of their emotions. I'll explain a little more about it in the descriptions and dialogue sections, though I wanted to bring it up here since I want to explain where the deductions come from.

Overall, the character work with Basil is pretty solid throughout the story, and seeing as he's the protagonist, that's a very good thing that I think will keep the readers engaged.

Plot: 7.5/10. The plot follows Basil and the other dragonets on a quest to find a cure for a mysterious disease, but only a human could find the cure for this, leading to Basil needing to risk everything to try and figure it out, otherwise the dragonets will have to go back to the way they lived before, which could lead to more deaths and injuries than they can count.

I like this plot and think it's quite unique. It's rare to see fanfics with this kind of plotline, curing a disease. It also helps that you tie it in with Basil's old love of science mixed with his terror and PTSD. It makes for an emotional center that I really enjoyed, and I also enjoyed how it went in the handler direction with Basil finding a new purpose and growing by the end of it. The high-stakes plot combined with the emotional core of Basil's character made for an engaging plot.

The only deductions come from pacing issues that I will explain in the next category, though I am bringing them up here to explain where the deductions come from. I'll explain more in the next section.

Overall, the plot carries the story from point A to point B in a way that feels intriguing, it could just use some tweaks to the pacing and overabundance of exposition.

Pacing: 7/15. The second half of the third chapter and chapter four are where the story starts to settle in. For the middle parts of the story, the pacing begins to even out as the problem of the disease becomes more serious, and that's matched with tension of wondering if Basil's secret is going to be discovered by the other dragonets. These various plot points come together and flow more smoothly in the latter half of the story, making for pacing that feels nice to read.

Critique-wise, my main critique is that chapters one and two are very slow because of how much exposition and summary there is. There is little in the way of scene, and the story is mostly told to us. We're told in chapter two about the animals in the forest, the Kymari mind, the Kymari discovering dragonets, genetic traits with the Morning Song, etc., and there are similar issues in chapter 1 where there's a lot of telling, summary, and exposition. In a way, it feels like you're trying to appeal to non-fans a little too much here by giving all this exposition and even a prologue to establish lore non-fans wouldn't know. I'm not sure if this is the reason so much exposition was included, but it does mean the story doesn't really start until chapter three, so following along the first two chapters can be a bit unengaging, and I would recommend downsizing on how much exposition, telling over showing, and summary over scene you do.

Another thing is the ending. We spent most of the story building to this moment where Basil would become a bonded animal, and by the end, we're told "He came by to offer me the option of becoming a bonded animal," and from there, it's told to us in two paragraphs that Basil becomes a bonded animal despite this being the moment we've been waiting for all story. So consider showing that moment in a scene instead of summarizing it.

Overall, the pacing is steady for the middle parts of the story, though the beginning and end could use some tweaks.

Creativity & Descriptions: 9/15. The story idea is based on Upon Wings of Change, though it takes that universe and expands on it with Basil as the protagonist needing to use his scientific past to bring about a cure for a disease impacting the Kymari. I think this is a very creative idea and solid core concept for the story, and I also like the direction you went with showing Basil's PTSD, as I've said before and will probably say again throughout the review. So when it comes to the creative side of the story, you do a good job bringing it to life with clear story direction!

Description-wise, there is a lot of telling over showing, such as: Thorn's voice showed his feelings (chap 10). How does Thorn's voice show his feelings? By saying "feelings," we can conclude a lot. To anyone reading this, they won't know what his feelings are, and even in-context without isolating sections, it's a bit tough to pick up on what these feelings are supposed to be. Is there an alternative way to describe these things? Maybe you can describe his voice through things like voice cracks, hiccups, emphasis on certain words, or maybe you can describe Thorn in general, like his facial expressions, his body language, any habits he might have (i.e., fiddling with his fingers while nervous), etc. So consider adding some more scene over summary and showing over telling to help flesh out the emotions more. And telling over showing is needed in storytelling, so that's not to say never tell, but consider implementing more showing since there is an overuse of telling.

I also agree with what Silver said about how it could be useful to give more specific descriptions to the other dragonets to help us tell them apart and also just give them more character. Like I mentioned in the characters section, while Basil is fleshed out emotionally and has more personality to him, the other characters present don't have as much going on. Some of that is understandable since Basil is the protagonist and not them, though it could be interesting to see more descriptions about them and their emotions.

Overall, the story idea is solid and creative, meaning the creative side of the story is solid, though it could use some tweaks to the overuse of telling over showing.

Worldbuilding: 8/10. The worldbuilding throughout the narrative is overall good, with the world of UWOC being really interesting and unique. You bring the world to life with an engaging take on the dragonets and their relationship with the Kymari along with the other races. I personally love the Morning Song and how it's described here, and I also liked the mind speak and how it's handled in your writing, where you give it the weight it needs, establishing that it's hard to lie in the link and hard to hide emotions. You did a good job bringing that to life and building tension because of Basil's past and him not wanting it to get out, but his darkest secrets could be revealed via a link, so it is a really interesting part of the world that genuinely impacts the characters in meaningful ways, which I appreciate.

Critique-wise, I have two things. One is sometimes where they are is vague. Like in the beginning of chapter 5, dialogue happens with no indication of where Basil is, and that takes up a big chunk of the chapter, too. So sometimes it could be interesting to establish the location a bit more clearly so the audience has a better grasp on their surroundings.

The second thing is the overuse of exposition that makes the world feel not as engaging as it could be. It could be interesting to have the exposition spread out more instead of most of it being in the first two and a half chapters, if that makes sense.

Overall, the worldbuilding is interesting and good, it could just use some tweaks to the exposition.

Dialogue: 13/15. The dialogue present throughout the story does what it needs to to keep the story and characters moving. I like Basil's dialogue and how he has to go about answering questions effectively but without revealing his big secret, too. It's like a game of cat and mouse within Basil, and he has to tell people different things depending on who he's talking to and what stage of the disease they're talking about. Like I mentioned in the worldbuilding section above, I also enjoyed the link and how they spoke to each other in their minds, and I don't mean the concept itself but rather the execution and how even there, in his own mind, Basil has to play cat and mouse. That was one of the most fun parts of the story for me. Well, "fun" as in fun to read, not actually fun to see Basil suffer, of course.

Critique-wise, I don't have much, as you can probably tell based on the very high score. There were just some unnatural or overly tell-esque moments with the descriptions around the dialogue, i.e. what I mentioned earlier about Thorn's voice showing emotion when none of it is shown, so it's hard to understand what that's supposed to mean, and another thing is this: She stuttered for a moment... (chap 5). For context, they're speaking through their minds, and there are no environmental cues to show they're in the same area, so how is she stuttering in her mind? Unless there's something about the link I don't understand, as I've never read the original, though I don't think stuttering works in that context. I hope both of those things make sense.

Overall, the dialogue is solid throughout the story and does a good job keeping the story moving.

Spelling & Grammar: 8.5/10. The SPAG present throughout the story is pretty good with no real consistent errors, only a few things here and there, like chapter 6 has a tag error right at the beginning with "Because of their fear of being killed, they normally won't speak to another race." Soranto said softly. The period/full stop should be a comma here. Or saying 20 miles instead of twenty miles. According to Chicago, the manuscript format, in this case, 20 should be twenty. It would be 20 if you were using the abbreviated version of miles since then it would become more like a unit of measurement, but since you're spelling it out as a general fact, the number should be spelled out, too (i.e., 20 lbs is fine since it's being used as a unit of measurement, but 20 pounds is not as it's being said generally, and it would be twenty pounds). On the opposite end, it would be 10 percent instead of ten percent (chapter 3) since it's a percentage being described. For more about the styling of numbers in Chicago, here's a document showing a Chicago number guide from the University of Tennessee: https://utiabrand.tennessee.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/96/2020/11/Chicago-Style-Quick-Sheet.docx#:~:text=In%20general%20spell%20out%20numbers,as%20a%20unit%20of%20measure.

It's no big deal since it's just numbers, and I'm probably the one of the only ones who's going to notice it, but since it is a manuscript that typically follows CMOS, I thought I would mention it, but it's nothing I'm going to take off much, if anything, for.

The last example I'll mention this sentence from chapter 1: And I did—for what it was worth, but that didn't help me. It's not necessarily wrong, but it is awkward and unclear since em dashes are used to separate info in many cases (not all, but in many), and in these types of sentence structures, they're usually used in a set of two. Consider: And—for what it was worth—I did, but that didn't help me. It's a little more clear what info you're separating here, and it also flows a bit stronger.

So, overall, the SPAG is solid throughout the story with just occasional errors that aren't too distracting, so it's no big deal or anything I'm going to take off much for.

Title/blurb/cover: 7.5/10. If You Asked Me To is a good title that is capitalized as needed and also has a good headline score of 71, which is green (and green = good, of course!). What this means is it has stronger SEO qualities than most other titles, and while that isn't as big a deal for books, since you're writing online, it is a nice little bonus. For those reasons, I think the title is good, and I don't have any critiques.

The blurb has great SPAG. I don't believe the blurb has any errors, which immediately puts it above most blurbs I review, so good job! When it comes to the creative side of the blurb, that's also good. It lets the reader know what the story is going to be about concisely. It could give a bit more tension about what Basil needs to do since it does feel like it ends a little abruptly, though that could also be because I'm unfamiliar with the fandom, so it's not as impactful to me as it is for others. Overall, the blurb is good.

Like I mentioned in my review of Imagine, I like the little jester hat you have on your name. I think it's an adorable feature I don't think I've seen any other writers use, so it attracts me immediately. I also like the font of your name! The picture chosen is interesting, though the color scheme could be tweaked as the purple and the desaturation of the background is a little off and could benefit from some tweaks to be more visually appealing, though that could also just be a me thing, and I'm no graphic designer, so I'd recommend speaking to those far more experienced and knowledgeable about graphics than me before changing anything.

Total: 71.5/100

Nous by matsya_200406

Review:

Characters: 12/15. The two main characters are Aryan and Mrinalini, and while there are other minor characters present throughout (but mostly at the beginning), for the purpose of this review, I will be focusing strictly on Aryan and Mrinalini.

Something I really like is how Mrinalini is a pilot. That may sound like a small thing, and it is, but I appreciate those unique professions in small-scale stories like this, and I also appreciate how Mrinalini's profession ties into her personality. Her being a pilot impacts her likes and dislikes and overall personality, and I appreciate that.

Another thing I enjoyed was how you managed to give them a lot of personality in such a short amount of time. This is a short story with not a high word count, which is great, but what's even better is how I feel like I know a lot about Aryan and Mrinalini because of their interactions and what I learn about them through their dialogue and reactions to each other's words. Sometimes the most effective way to learn about a character is not to know all their favorite and least favorite things but rather see their emotions and how they react to things, and that's what you show here (though you show likes and dislikes, too, which is good). I was impressed by the level of detail the characters had and how you managed to fit it in a really short story without it feeling forced or unnatural.

I also appreciate your attention to detail with the character appearances. That's a nice touch that makes the characters feel more fleshed out. Like I enjoyed the attention to detail to Aryan's eyes, for example. Those small details add up to make me want to read about them more!

The only critique I have is the story can be hard to follow at times due to the POV switching, making it difficult to know who the "I" is, therefore making it hard to attach to and understand the characters at times, though I will explain this in more detail and with stronger suggestions in the upcoming pacing category.

Overall, the character work present throughout the story is solid, and I enjoyed how you managed to do so much without it feeling forced!

Plot: 8/10. The plot is pretty straightforward, where Mrinalini and Aryan meet again after a long time, and the truth about their friendship, or lack thereof, is revealed. From there, Aryan admits his feelings for Mrinalini, and it ends on a positive note.

Like I just mentioned, this is a straightforward plot that I think works well for the chosen narrative. You keep the plot minimal to focus on the characters instead. The plot is the characters. For those reasons, I don't have too much to say about the plot other than I thought you did a good job keeping the focus where it needed to be. Since the characters are good, and the plot revolves around the characters, the plot is good!

The only critiques come from some pacing critiques I have, but I'll explain those in the next section. I just wanted to bring it up here so you know where the deductions come from, but future me will explain in more detail what I mean by pacing critiques.

Overall, the plot works well for the story and therefore deserves a high score!

Pacing: 10/15. The pacing throughout the story is overall good, and one of my favorite parts is the opening! I really like how it opens casually by showing the aviation world while also setting up future events. It's a relaxed opening that takes its time to establish the plot and main character, so you were off to a good start with the solid opening, and the pacing overall maintains its course throughout, though I do have one critique I'll mention below.

The critique I have is what I mentioned vaguely before about POV jumping. You may want to consider writing in third-person omniscient POV since this short jumps between Mrinalini and Aryan frequently, and at first, I had no idea who was which POV. It took me until halfway through the story to start seeing the alternating pattern, especially since many of these POV switches happen in the middle of conversations, making it very difficult to follow what's happening and which character I'm reading about. I would advise against switching POVs mid-conversation since it can very easily get confusing, and I did find myself confused for the beginning especially but also toward the end with the frequent jumps. It also takes the reader out of the moment since we're immersed in one POV, then suddenly, in the middle of the scene we're immersed in, we now need to adjust to a new POV. So my recommendations would be either to label the POV (this is first person POV, that's why it's so difficult to tell when you switch, so labeling who's POV it is at the start of each new section could be beneficial), or considering writing in third-person omniscient POV, which specializes in being able to "head hop," as some say, which essentially means just bouncing between different characters' thoughts and perspectives. It's a challenging POV to write, and it's one I don't personally write in, but I hear that it is a fun POV, when done correctly. I hope all of that made sense!

Overall, the pacing is good and works for the story, starting strong with a good opening and concluding on a positive, satisfying note. There could just be some tweaks to the frequent unlabeled POV swaps, but the pacing otherwise works.

Creativity & Descriptions: 10/15. The story has an overall common idea with lost love, though it's presented in a unique angle and given interesting details to make it feel more fresh, which I believe makes the story creative. I said it once and I'll say it again, I love how the main character is a pilot and her travels of the world are a frequent discussion topic. Those things make the story feel more creative and intriguing to read about, so when it comes to the creativity in the story, I think you have it with less-common character ideas and a cool way to take the lost love story idea!

When it comes to the descriptions, they're overall okay though could be fleshed out. Before I get into that, though, I appreciate your attention to detail when it comes to the character appearances. Like I mentioned in the characters section, you have a great eye for detail for the appearances. Aryan's eyes are thoroughly described, same with the outfits, and I appreciate how their appearances play a key role in the story. So I know I mentioned it before, but I wanted to mention it again here because that is part of the descriptions category, and you did a good job with that.

When it comes to suggestions, there could be more expansion on the descriptions other than the appearances, as the physical locations aren't described much, if at all. Like the balcony is mentioned but not really described, and it could be interesting to see the same level of detail you had for the appearances applied to the environment, or at least a little more. For example, Mrinalini goes out to the balcony while carrying a glass of cola; the text highlights that cola. However, later, I don't believe the glass is mentioned again even though the next scene appears to happen shortly after if not right after Mrinalini goes to the balcony. I know that may seem nitpicky since it doesn't impact the overall narrative at all, but it may make the reader question why mention the cola if it doesn't have any impact on the balcony scene later. Those kinds of details can make the world feel more realistic. I could be totally wrong and it was mentioned, though I did skim it again to see if there was any mention of the cola, but I don't believe there was. Either way, there could be some more physical descriptions of the environment to make the environments feel more fleshed out. I hope that makes sense!

Overall, the creativity and descriptions are good and deserve a high score!

Worldbuilding: 7/10. The worldbuilding presented throughout the story does what it needs to to keep the story's momentum going. This is not a world-focused narrative because you want to focus on the characters and themes instead, which is absolutely okay and works in the narrative's favor. That being said, even with less focus on the world, you have some aspects of the world that I really like. For example, I love the aviation side of the world. I have severe aerophobia, so I've developed a strange hyper fixation on all things plane-related. I spend much of my days listening to documentaries on planes and things like that, so I really appreciated the technical talk and how the plane portions of the story were handled. It may sound like a small thing to point out, but those details make me care more for the characters and the story since it shows you as an author really care, and I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate that.

The only deductions come from what I mentioned in the previous section about how there could be more environmental descriptions, like of the balcony, to help flesh out the world around the characters. Though, with that being said, I still enjoyed the aviation side of the world and how you chose to focus more on the characters, so I still think this section deserves a high score!

Dialogue: 10/15. The dialogue present throughout the story works well and does a good job presenting information about the characters. Like I mentioned in the characters section, the dialogue shows character personalities well, and I appreciate that you put so much effort into making each line count, especially the later the story goes on and the more serious it gets. I'd say the dialogue hits its peak near the end when Mrinalini and Aryan are talking one-on-one and discussing past experiences and hurt.

For example, I really like the "Did you want fireworks" line. I know that's a small thing to point out, but I enjoyed how cute and humorous it was. I rarely show many reactions when I read, but I chuckled when I read that line. So those types of lines were done well, and the humor throughout was presented tastefully and not overdone. It's a common flaw for authors to overdo humor (I myself am guilty of this sometimes), so I appreciate that you kept the tone consistent through the dialogue and saved the humor for the right moments.

Critique-wise, what I have to say is grammatical. There are grammar errors with how the dialogue is formatted. There are extra spaces between the quotation marks and the words. I.e., " Yeah, I have a reunion to look forward to, " I said casually. Consider: "Yeah, I have a reunion to look forward to," I said casually. This is a frequent error where you have a lot of unneeded spaces, and while it isn't a big deal, I would recommend for future works making sure the quotation marks don't have unnecessary spaces since it can be hard on the eyes to read.

Another error is tags are a little inconsistent. For example: "I want to know all about it," He said, turning to look at me, "Seeing as I know nothing about your life since the past ten years," He continued. I used this as an example to show a couple errors, so killing a few birds with one stone, if you will. To begin, dialogue tags are always lowercase unless they are a proper noun. "I" is a proper noun, so it's fine to leave things like that capitalized, but "he" is not, therefore it needs to be lowercase. So, looking strictly at that, it would be: "I want to know all about it," he said. For the second part, when you're continuing dialogue with a comma instead of a period/full stop, the first letter needs to be lowercase (again, with the only exception being if it's a proper noun). So it would become this: "I want to know all about it," he said, turning to look at me, "seeing as I know nothing about your life since the past ten years." The third and final part is you don't need the "he continued" at the end because you already used "he said," and on top of that, you also used a comma after "me" in the beginning to signal to the reader that the dialogue is still going. You don't need more than one dialogue tag for the same line except in rare cases, like if there's a really drastic change in the way the character is speaking (and even then, I recommend showing that instead of telling it via a dialogue tag). So, altogether, it would become this: "I want to know all about it," he said, turning to look at me, "seeing as I know nothing about your life since the past ten years."

All of that is to say A) dialogue tags should always be lowercase unless they are a proper noun, B) when continuing dialogue with a comma, the second piece needs to be lowercase unless it it a proper noun, and C) you don't need two dialogue tags for the same line spoken by the same person. I hope all of that makes sense!

Overall, the dialogue has some grammar/presentation errors but is overall good and works well for the characters.

Spelling & Grammar: 6/10. The spelling, grammar, and punctuation, or SPAG for short, is overall okay though could use some tweaks I'll mention below.

There are frequent errors throughout the story, and I will mention a few. I'll start small. There are some typing errors here and there, like up being spelled as uo and or being capitalized as Or at one point. Minor thing but still worth mentioning.

There are some possessive issues here and there, with sentences like this: "Yes, well, being a pilot does have it's perks." The it's needs to be its since the position of pilot is being possessive there.

Another thing is there are dialogue tag errors, like I mentioned in the previous section. I.e., "No, you're right," She whispered, cleared her throat. The "she" needs to be lowercase, and the "cleared" needs to be "clearing."

There are some comma errors here and there, like this: "You are hurt by people you consider your own Mrinalini." Consider: "You are hurt by people you consider your own, Mrinalini." Since the name Mrinalini isn't essential to the sentence, you can block it off with a comma. You'll notice in books when a name is present in dialogue, it's typically separated by a comma, and that's because it doesn't impact the sentence. For example: "Are you okay, Raven?" The presence of "Raven" doesn't change that the sentence is saying "are you okay," so that's why there's a comma to show the name is non-essential. The same applies to titles, like sir. "Are you okay, sir?" I hope that makes sense!

So overall, the SPAG is okay but could use some tweaks.

Title/blurb/cover: 7/10. The title is Nous, which is an adorable title that I really like. It's short and sweet, and it makes me curious to know what the book is going to be about. For those reasons, I have no critiques for the title!

The blurb gives a general rundown of what happens in the story, though it could use some tweaks to its presentation. This is the blurb:

The faculty to of the human brain to understand what is true and real.

Two friends, one month of unattended phone calls, one unrequited crush and a reunion.

That's how they would have defined their interactions in life..

But a high school reunion ten years later will change the way they had perceived them till now.

A secret to unearth, a broken friendship to mend.

Will they do it? Or will they search for more?

To begin, I would recommend connecting more of the lines instead of having them all separated, that way it's easier on the reader to read. I would also recommend some tweaks to that first sentence especially since it's a bit confusing what the intended meaning of the sentence was.

Consider:

The fault of the human brain is trying to understand what is real.

Two friends, one month of unattended phone calls, one unrequited crush, and a reunion. That's how they would have defined their relationship. But a high school reunion ten years later will change how they perceived each other.

A secret to unearth, a broken friendship to mend. Will they do it? Or will they search for more?

Of course you can modify it as needed and/or to better fit your vision for the blurb, but that's a sample rewrite of what the blurb could look like to be a bit more readable with a core paragraph rather than all the lines divided and the first line tweaked a bit. I hope all of what I'm saying makes sense!

The cover has an absolutely awesome background image that perfectly sets up the story, with it revolving around love and aviation. I love the art style and how it feels so vibrant and welcoming. It immediately makes me want to click to see more of the story and what it could be about. So you definitely do a good job attracting the audience.

The only minor critique I have is I'm not a huge fan of the title's formatting. The title is in a block of sorts on the bottom righthand side of the screen, and I feel it's a bit off when compared to the rest of the cover. I'm no graphic designer, so it may be best to consult someone far more experienced than me before making any changes, though consider reworking the title card to have it fit in more with the unique style of the cover. For example, maybe remove it from the purple block and have the circled letters realigned to be the bottom center of the screen. So consider playing around with title format and placement, is essentially what I'm saying. Though, with that being said, I still like the cover and love the art style!

Total: 70/100.

Thought We Built A Dynasty by Yoonkeeri

Review:

*Before we get started, I just want to say I apologize if anything I said in the past review of this story comes up here. I reviewed them at different times and don't like to reference past reviews to form new ones since I want to see stories from a fresh perspective, even if I've read them before. So if there is anything I've said before, please feel free to ignore it since I don't wanna sound like a broken record saying the same things over and over, lol.

Characters: 10/15. The two main characters present in the narrative are Yoongi and Jin, with appearances from Jungkook and other BTS members as well, though they are not major characters, so I'm really only going to focus on Yoonjin with dashes of Jungkook.

I'll start with Jungkook because he's the smaller character but more important than the other smaller characters. Jungkook plays a small but important role where he's the one who shows Jin to Yoongi, and Jungkook is like the support friend throughout the piece. I think you did a good job making Jungkook supportive but not overbearing, giving him a perfectly balanced role in the plot. The same applies to the doctors, the Kims. They're present but not overbearing and provide a very clear role in the narrative, so good job balancing the characters out.

When it comes to Yoongi and Jin in particular, I think you did a good job with them. They're complex, torn individuals who are dealing with the sickness in different ways, with Jin clinging to hope and also to his first memory of meeting Yoongi, and Yoongi preparing to face the inevitable. Yet, despite those differences, their love remains the same, which I think is a powerful message. It may sound silly to phrase it like this, but love can persevere through adversity, even when all seems lost. I honestly think that's a powerful message to have that Yoongi and Jin can persevere and comfort each other despite the circumstances, and they're mature adults who handle it together.

Critique-wise, I don't have too much. This is a very minor thing, but does Hoseok need a whole introduction with the picture and age? I say this because he's only in the first chapter but then never shows up again, as far as I'm aware. I re-skimmed it to look for his name, but I only found it in chapter 1, so the introduction makes it feel like he's going to be more important when he only shows up once. If it were just a random florist with no name, it wouldn't make any difference to the plot. I do like the florist being Hoseok since it fits his personality and acts as a nice cameo, but the very minor critique I have is I felt the whole picture and age intro card wasn't needed since he doesn't show up again or really have any impact on the plot. That's a minor thing, I know, but still worth mentioning.

The only critiques I have deal with dialogue, which I'll get into later, and I also have some critiques for the presence of Jimin in the story, but I'll explain that in the next section since I feel that's more plot than character, though since Jimin is a major character, it does factor into this section as well, but I'll explain all of that in their respective sections. Overall, the character work is good and has a clear focus on Yoongi and Jin and their relationship.

Plot: 6/10. The plot is relatively simple: Yoongi has stomach cancer and has a limited time to live, and even with special treatments, it doesn't extend his life long enough. He ends up passing away while Jin sings the song Thought We Built A Dynasty, which is from the OST of the show that he stars in.

I'll start with the pacing before getting into the plot. I have a pacing section, so I'll save most of my thoughts for there, but I just wanted to start off by saying the pacing is good, and since that impacts the plot so much, it does give points to this section for being good. So I wanted to start with that, but now let's move into the core of the plot itself.

The plot, like I mentioned before, is relatively simple: a cancer patient, love slowly dying (literally), and bittersweet goodbyes. It's simple because it's what you're trying to do with the themes: love slipping away. So, for those reasons, I think the plot has a good idea and good foundation to make it interesting and unique. It's engaging, too; I thought that all the chapters had lots of content in them without feeling like they were too much, so it kept me interested to see what would happen.

Like I mentioned in the previous section, I also like how the BTS members played a role but not so much that it became obnoxious or distracted from the primary point of the plot, so that's yet another thing about the plot that I thought you did well.

The only thing I wasn't a huge fan of plot-wise was the ending. Personally, I thought the role of Jimin took away a lot from the emotional impact of Yoongi passing away. Now, I know how this is about to sound, so hear me out: I don't think Jimin should have been in this story. I know, I know, the hardcore PJMs who barks when Jimin breathes is saying this, but the reason I'm saying it is because we invested eight chapters into Jin and Yoongi's dynamic, and it seemed like acceptance of loss was going to be the message considering the whole journal segment and how Jin was handling the loss, but for Jimin to show up and change that only for the last chapter (as that's when it happens) feels like it took away a lot of the emotions for me. Especially since there were no hints that I picked up on in the title, blurb, cover, tags, or anywhere throughout the story that this was going to have the concept of angels and the supernatural in it, so to have it suddenly there at the end of chapter 8 and for chapter 9 was a bit jarring. The happy ending felt a little forced, is probably the simpler way to put it. This felt like a story that needed a bittersweet or sad ending of Jin accepting the loss and singing the thought we built a dynasty song by himself for a powerful moment where he realizes he can spread his story with others through his acting career and give them hope with the song, the same way it gave hope to him and Yoongi. Now that's just one way to take it, but it could have plenty of other potential endings as well.

So, to break it down, I wasn't a huge fan of the ending and thought it took away from a lot of the emotional gut punches present throughout the narrative, and also like it went back on what appeared to be the theme of the narrative; however, with all that being said, the start of the plot and the pacing is still good, so I do think the plot deserves credit for that as it does keep the reader engaged and has much intrigue I encourage you to keep incorporating in your works!

Pacing: 13/15. The pacing throughout the story is, as I mentioned in the previous section, good. It flows out at an even rate that never feels too fast or too slow, and there are no chapters that feel like filler. Every chapter is needed and has a good length, ending where they need to and starting off pretty strong, too. In other words, it doesn't feel like you were extending the word count for sake of extending the word count, which is great.

When it comes to the character development, as that is another key aspect of pacing, you do a good job fleshing out the characters, primarily Yoonjin, in a way that makes sense. I feel like I uncovered a lot about them in a short time, but at the same time, I wasn't overwhelmed by how much I learned about them as individuals, so that's good.

The only critique I have is what I mentioned before in the plot section where the ending feels sudden with the concept of angels being brought in last-second, so it was a bit of a 180 for me while reading to go from the grounded reality to suddenly more magical things happening. However, the majority of the story is paced very well, so I'm not going to take off much for that. Overall, the pacing of the story is good, so it deserves a high score.

Creativity & Descriptions: 12/15. The creativity and descriptions present throughout the narrative are overall good. The descriptions, as I mentioned earlier, aren't over-the-top and do a good job grounding the reader in the moment without going overboard. At the same time, you don't go under and under-describe things, so that makes for a good balance. You have the descriptions you need for this kind of short story, and I appreciate that.

The creativity is good, too. While it is a simple story with a concept done before (lovers impacted by cancer), I believe a story's merit does not lay in how often the idea has been done but rather how the individual story executes said idea. You execute the idea in an interesting way, giving it an added layer with Jin's acting career, making it so his career and core personality impact the actual plot and dynamics, which is cool to see. The OST being heavily involved also made for a unique spin on this type of story, giving it another layer that I think many readers will enjoy. So when it comes to the creativity, you did a good job giving the idea more layers and creativity than the average story with this concept.

The only critiques I have are some awkward sentences here and there that impact the descriptions, though I'll explain that in the grammar section. Along with that, there could be some diversity with the ellipse and stutter usage, but that's another thing I'll explain later, this time in the dialogue section. So I'll explain both of those later, but I wanted to bring them up here to explain why there were points taken off, as those two things impact the creativity and descriptions, too. But overall, the creativity and descriptions are good and deserve a high score.

Worldbuilding: 7/10. The worldbuilding is overall pretty good, as you can probably tell based on the score being high. The locations are clear, and I especially enjoy how Jin remembers the place Yoongi and him first met so vividly and keeps going back there. It gives the readers something to hold on to as well, where we see that place they met as a kind of focal point for both their relationship and our engagement with the story. The environments are also well-described, never going too over-the-top or feeling unnecessary, and at the same time, also not feeling under-described, so there's a good balance there. The medical side of the worldbuilding is also good, where you keep the treatment a little vague, but I think that works since you mention the experimental treatments and how it can help Yoongi without going through chapters upon chapters of seeing him actually going through the treatments. The focus is on Yoongi and Jin, so I'm glad you kept it there.

The only thing is, and I hate to sound like a broken record, the ending with the angels is really sudden in terms of worldbuilding since I don't recall there being any indications that there is a more fantastical and spiritual side of the world, so going from the gritty reality to the angels was a bit confusing for me upon my first read, but the overall worldbuilding is still good and deserves a high score, so all in all, good job with it!

Dialogue: 10/15. The dialogue present throughout the story is good and does a good job elevating the narrative to new emotional heights. I especially enjoyed the concept of Jin singing his OST to Yoongi. Since this singing and the emotional depth the song has for the relationship is shared through the dialogue, that's why I'm mentioning it here. So I liked that emotional side of it and thought you did a good job presenting it.

In general, Yoongi and Jin bounce off each other well and feel like a nice, realistic relationship, and I'm glad they talk to each other about the treatment and the sickness and are open about it, even though Yoongi was scared at first and didn't want to feel like a burden. It was hard to read, but in a good way where it can be hard to read about these tough topics. I've unfortunately been surrounded by cancer pretty much my whole life, and one of my closest family friends passed because of it a few years ago, so I'm pretty familiar with this topic, and I can safely say you wrote about it accurately, and a lot of that is present through the dialogue. Good job with it!

While there are some inconsistencies I'll mention soon, the dialogue tags are done mostly correctly, so that's really good and gives you an advantage since most people don't do dialogue tags correctly. They are the single most common error I see, so good job staying ahead of the curve and doing them correctly most of the time, aside from minor cases I'll mention later in this section.

When it comes to critiques, I have a couple. I am probably the last person to ever recommend diversifying dialogue tags. I am so anti-dialogue tag that I go to extreme lengths in my works to avoid using them. I think I only use tags for around 10% of my dialogue, if even that (in my most recent writing, anyway). So take this suggestion with a grain of salt since I'm normally very anti-tag, let alone tags that are not said or asked. All of this preamble is leading into how I noticed there's a lot of whispering, especially in the first chapter. It's not a big deal or anything worth like panicking over or rushing to edit, though it could be beneficial to diversify this a bit by either changing the tag to a synonym for whispered or even just describing his voice in a showing over telling way. Instead of saying "he whispered to himself," can he ask himself? Or can he just think it to himself in italics? You mention his voice barely being audible at a time. Is there a way to expand on that and show the whisper more? That's just one way to do it, but you could also just use "murmured," "muttered," "mumbled," etc. since this is a short story, and I don't want to risk telling you to add like twenty million paragraphs of description. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I think you get what I mean, haha. So consider diversifying how much whispering there is, but you could also diversify it in general by including less whispering/murmuring/muttering and all that since you do use the other verbs (like murmuring) at times, so it could also be interesting to diversify it a bit in that sense, too.

The dialogue tags are mostly done correctly, though there are some inconsistencies here and there, like you'll have: "Was he mad that I avoided the topic of marriage before?" He whispered to himself. The "he" needs to be lowercase. Even when dialogue ends with a ? or !, the tag needs to be lowercase unless it is a proper noun. Similarly, sometimes you'll end dialogue with a period/full stop when you're using a tag after it. Like: "Please go ahead." He said. It should be: "Please go ahead," he said. When using a tag after the dialogue, the dialogue can end with anything other than a period/full stop. So, in this case, a comma. I hope that makes sense.

Another thing is consider downsizing on stutters and ellipses, but especially ellipses (or the three dot, ..., punctuation). The reason I say this is because it can become hard to read and risks becoming overdramatic when you include too many stutters and ellipses. My father, also a writer, once told me a piece of advice that stuck with me: you can show stuttering far more effectively than telling it. I'm talking the letter stutters, like h-hi and things. Are there alternative ways to show this? I ask this because not only will showing it be more emotionally impactful, but it also doesn't hurt the audience's eyes or reading speed, as including too many stutters and/or ellipses can become unnatural to read. It can be far more effective for a reader to imagine the stutter rather than be explicitly told it through having a lot of dialogue like h-hi and things like that. To do this, you can describe their voices hitching and cracking, describe them cutting off early, describe them running out of breath, describe their vocal tones (i.e., are their voices scratchy, raspy, etc.?). etc. And, by the way, I'm not one of those people who thinks everything needs to be shown and never told since I think that's bad advice. Telling is needed in storytelling; every story has some bit of telling in it. My point is more to consider downsizing on the telling by eliminating some of the stutters and ellipses.

Another thing to keep in mind is the more you use something, the less impact it has. If you use twenty exclamation marks, it's going to start losing its impact by exclamation mark number five. The same applies to stutters and ellipses. Consider spacing them out more to give them more emphasis and emotional impact. I hope that makes sense!

So, all in all, the dialogue is solid and works for what you're trying to do in the story, it could just use some minor tweaks and reductions to how many ellipses/stutters there are.

Spelling & Grammar: 8/10. The overall spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG for short, is good throughout the story, making for a fluid read. I didn't notice too many errors, and most of what I noticed was in chapter 1 but smoothened out later with the later chapters featuring far less errors aside from the tags. When the SPAG is good, there's not much to say other than good job, so good job!

There are only minor errors and some inconsistencies. Like I mentioned in the dialogue section, there were some inconsistencies with the tags being sometimes correct and other times incorrect, so I would just recommend more consistency with that. There are also just a couple awkward sentences here and there, like the opening line of chapter 1 being "Jin at final landed..." I would recommend "Jin at last landed..." or "Jin finally landed...", whichever you'd prefer. So just some minor awkwardness here and there and some some tag errors, but the overall SPAG is good.

Title/blurb/cover: 7/10. The title is Thought We Built A Dynasty, which is a good title for the piece. Having already read the story, I know the title fits in perfectly with the story's message and how it's displayed, but even beyond that, it's an intriguing title unlike what I've commonly seen on Wattpad, so good job with it. Only small thing is something I'm not going to take off points for, but I would recommend removing the ellipse (...) after the ✅. I say this because you already have an ellipse after the "Dynasty," so it looks like: Thought We Built A Dynasty... ✅... So I recommend removing the second ... since there already is one. I'm not taking off points for it, though I just thought it was worth mentioning.

The blurb itself is good. It tells the reader exactly what to expect when they click on the story without spoiling too much to the point where we don't need to click on it since we know what happens. It inspires intrigue without overstaying its welcome, and it raises questions in the audience's mind about what's going to happen to Yoongi and how Jin will react to it, so it sets stakes and shows promise that it will follow through on explaining these questions. I already read it, so I know that the questions raised by the blurb are, in fact, explored, so good job there.

I think it can be taken as both a positive and a negative when I say my critiques of the blurb is everything around the blurb and not the blurb itself, so the blurb itself is good. The core part explaining what the story is going to be about, I mean. Those two paragraphs and the line underneath it saying "Will their love withstand the ultimate test, or will fate's cruel hand tear them apart?" That's all good. My critiques are about what's above that and below that.

To begin, I felt the 'Thought we built a Dynasty...' is a gripping tale of love and loss... part was a bit unneeded. It feels a bit like you were trying to put what a reviewer thought of the book in the blurb but then the reviewer's thoughts weren't continued. Real books employ this strategy and include reviewer's thoughts on the book somewhere on the book's cover or inside the book, though here I would recommend not having it since you already have so much going on in the blurb with the large intro and then the blurb itself, so putting even more felt a little unneeded, if that makes sense. Though if you want to do a "reviewer's thoughts" style of writing, I would recommend having it be more clear that's what you're doing since, again it felt more like a reviewer's thoughts than a core part of the blurb. To summarize all of that, I would recommend either removing it or rewording it to be more clear about the intention of the sentence since it feels like a third-person excerpt from a reviewer, if that makes sense.

The second thing is the large introduction having "Thought we built a dynasty." This intro is ten lines long, which is way too long. Before I get into the length, I would recommend removing the hearts and the heartbroken emoji. I would recommend never using emoticons and/or emojis in blurbs since they can come off as really forced and take away from the serious tone you're going for with this intro. As for the length itself, I would recommend massively downsizing and considering having just one or two "thought we built a dynasty" lines before closing it off with the "but as I whisper these words..." part. I say this because we have to read ten lines before we get to the actual blurb where we learn what the story is about, which is a lot to sit through before even knowing what the story is about. I hope that makes sense!

So, overall, the blurb itself is very good. I didn't notice any SPAG errors, and I thought you did a good job getting the reader engaged. I would just recommend some tweaks to the things around the blurb to help hook the reader in and get them ready to read.

I like the concept of the cover having the black and white Yoongi with the full color Jin along with the flowers sprinkled around since they represent what Yoongi likes most. So I think it's a clever cover since it has a lot of subtext and shows what the story is about without it being too too obvious. I already read the book, so maybe it's more obvious to me than others, though I'm sure someone who hasn't read the book will be able to pick it apart more since they don't know the meanings. The only minor critique I have is I'm not a huge fan of the font. Since there's already a lot going on (visually) with the cover with a lot of different colors and objects, the font was a little much for me, and it could be interesting to see a more simplistic cursive font or something of the sort. I'm not entirely sure; I've never been the best with fonts, after all. Though in my personal opinion, I wasn't a huge fan of it. But someone else might love it. I'm no graphic designer, so I'm not saying you have to change it, simply giving my opinion. But other than the font, I thought the cover was good.

Total: 73/100.

Footsteps Approaching by Evolution-500

Review:

*Note before we begin: According to Wattpad guidelines, this story should be marked mature as there are frequent graphic depictions of violence, including cannibalism and shown bloody bones and other horrifying elements. So I would very strongly recommend marking this story as mature due to the graphic violence. The cursing is fine; language doesn't determine a story's ranking, though the graphic violence does, which would warrant this needing to be mature. This will not impact the score at all, more a personal recommendation to mark it as mature. But that aside, let's get into the review.

Characters: 10/15. The main and basically sole character is Jeremy, so he will be my focus for the review, though I also wanted to mention Mister White, the clown, because I found his character really interesting. I thought you did a good job making him scary, and I found it engaging when he was apologizing to Jeremy as I wasn't expecting that, to say the least. So I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate Mister White before going into Jeremy, our lovely protagonist.

Jeremy is like a stand in for the audience to see these horrific concepts through his eyes, and you really can't help but feel bad for him. Maybe it's just because I'm also a university student, but I really felt for the poor kid. At this age, we're really young and have whole lives ahead of us, so to know Jeremy got his absolutely eviscerated by something no one could even comprehend is beyond terrifying to think about, and you do a good job putting us in Jeremy's shoes by showing us in visceral detail what he's going through and how he's dealing with "surviving," if one could even call it that. Jeremy is like our eye and mouthpiece for this experience, and he works well for what you're trying to do, so I like the overall direction you took his character.

The deductions come from a few things with some dialogue errors I'll mention later, and also I'm unsure how to feel about Jeremy in the beginning, as his choice to listen to the clown does feel a little forced and contrived. Perhaps if he were shown as more nonchalant, it could be more believable that he would go to the carnival as he was shown jumping and being paranoid about crows that seemed slightly unnatural, but he doesn't seem paranoid at all about the carnival popping up in the middle of nowhere. So it's a bit odd to have him going from being paranoid over crows to being willing to explore a carnival more. Maybe that's just a me thing, though it's still worth mentioning. I try to be as objective as possible, but a review is still a review, and there's going to be a lot of subjectivity, so I'll still include my subjective opinion since it's important. So, anyway, yapping aside, I think the character work here does what it needs to for the narrative, with Jeremy acting as our protagonist and vessel to witness this cosmic being, and I think that was overall a good direction to take the story!

Plot: 7.5/10. The plot idea is extremely solid. Now, before I even get into it, I'll say right off the bat that I am the target audience for this type of work. I adore sci-fi and Lovecraft to the point where I wrote a Lovecraft-inspired story, too. So this kind of Lovecraftian horror is exactly my type of story, and it's also incredibly unique in the Wattpad landscape. I actually pitched a Lovecraftian Horror reading list idea to the sci-fi profile, but it's just such a narrow scope that it's hard to find enough to fill it. So that foreshadows what I'm going to say in the creativity section, haha.

But putting bias aside, it's still just an objectively unique idea for the reasons I mentioned above. I read your author's note at the end expressing your desire to create a dinosaur story unlike any other, and you definitely succeeded. I think you do a good job with this where you make it a cosmic horror dinosaur where it's debatable if we can even call it "dinosaur" anymore, and I think it goes without saying that that's an awesome idea I don't think I've seen done in the dinosaur genre before. Along with that, anyone who knows Lovecraft knew there was just no way Jeremy was getting a happy ending and surviving that. Poor dude.

Critique-wise, I don't have much. This is a small thing since it essentially just boils down to a title, but the prologue doesn't really feel like a prologue since it directly connects to chapter one and has hook qualities that a first chapter would possess. Typically a prologue comes before the core text, which stems from the prefix pro (before) and logue (word), so literally before word, which is normally seen as the past in the modern landscape. In many prologues, though not all of them, the main character(s) isn't even present, or if they are, they're shown at a completely different stage of their life. So I didn't see any qualities that justified this being named a prologue instead of chapter one, as it directly jumps into the plot rather than provide backdrop information needed for the plot, which is the main function of a prologue.

The other area where deductions came from is the pacing, as there are some pacing issues in the beginning in the prologue, though I'll explain that in the next section.

Overall, the plot is solid and really interesting, and it held my attention for the majority of the story.

Pacing: 9/15. Once we get into later chapter 1 and chapters 2 and 3 especially, the pacing evens out and becomes more fluid and interesting for the readers to digest. Seeing Jeremy running for his life is the highlight of the piece, which I realize probably makes me sound crazy that I enjoyed reading a man running for his life, but I think you know what I mean, haha. I don't mean I like to see him running because I like people suffering, I mean it's interesting to see people react to these different situations, especially situations that are so creative.

Before I dig myself into a deeper hole that makes me seem crazier, I'll just move on and say that the rest of the story after the prologue does a good job maintaining its pace and feeling fleshed out, and I enjoyed how you described Jeremy's journey to get out of that horrid place.

The reason points were deducted is because of the prologue. Like I mentioned earlier, the prologue isn't really a prologue where it feels more like a first chapter. If you want it to be more of a prologue, consider having it instead be a different character living through one of the legends/stories Jeremy is thinking of, that way you're setting backdrop information for the narrative, keeping it separate from the main character and present timeline so it feels more like a prologue, and it helps with the exposition since now that you showed it narratively, there isn't as much need to tell it in exposition in the prologue chapter. But that's just a random idea and not a must, though I thought I would mention it since it being titled a prologue does impact the pacing as readers will go in expecting something different or even skip the prologue entirely, but it's necessary to understand chapter one, so they'll be left confused. Which, to be fair, a reader skipping the prologue isn't your fault, and I personally don't really understand why people skip prologues as I never do, but it is a common practice since prologues typically don't directly show the present timeline, so readers think they can skip them. But that's honestly just a small thing that isn't a big deal, but still worth mentioning.

The main thing is the overuse of exposition in the prologue. There are a lot of paragraphs about the various stories about the Monarch Forest, and it begins to drag very quickly, and it makes the prologue feel unnecessarily long. By the time the interesting ending happens, I'm tuned out because I read through several walls of text. I believe there are around 17 paragraphs of exposition in the first part of the prologue, covering the various things like the legends of Monarch Forest, the name, and the disappearances. Of course some of this is necessary, but consider downsizing on some of the exposition since that's a lot of read time to sit through before we get to the carnival, which is the most interesting part of that prologue by far. The introduction to your story is extremely important, so I would recommend considering what pieces of exposition you don't need and cutting them, or if there are any other ways to get that exposition across, such as spacing it out more instead of having a lot of paragraphs back-to-back giving exposition.

Overall, once the pacing picks up and finds its footing, it flows out at a solid pace that makes me interested to see more of Jeremy's journey, even though I know in a Lovecraft-like tale, there was never going to be a happy sunshine and rainbows ending for the poor guy.

Creativity & Descriptions: 13/15. Like I mentioned in the plot section, the creativity of this idea is off the charts. It's a great idea supported by great execution that makes it so cool to read, especially in the final chapter as you really pull out all your cards and go ham with your descriptions and ideas. I was somehow attached to Rex despite the horrific things that happened as a result of Rex's existence. It's just such a cool idea.

Something I really like is how the title plays into your work, with the footsteps approaching playing a major part in the descriptions and causing Jeremy's mood to change depending on if that text is flashing or not. I know that's a small thing, but it makes the narrative feel much more fleshed out and realistic, which I appreciated.

In general, the descriptions are solid, with you utilizing the five senses to give the narrative a more well-rounded feel. I felt like I could imagine everything pretty well, which is tough for me to do, so I enjoyed how you were able to weave together amazing descriptions that made it so I could actually picture it in my mind!

The only deductions come from a couple of awkward sentences in the prologue along with the overuse of exposition I mentioned earlier, but otherwise, the creativity and descriptions are great and deserve a very high score.

Worldbuilding: 8/10. The world is dripping with interesting ideas that are so unique and unlike anything I've seen before. Like I mentioned previously, the dinosaur idea and how you implement it is fantastic, and I loved every second Rex was on screen. I can feel the inspiration from Lovecraft throughout the piece, but you still weave it together in a way that's uniquely you, making the world that much more interesting. It also helps that the descriptions of what's happening are good, too, making for a well-rounded narrative with a rich world I enjoyed. It was probably my favorite part of the narrative, in fact.

Critique-wise, I don't mean to be a broken record, but it does impact the worldbuilding as well: the only deductions come from the overuse of exposition at the beginning since it makes the world feel more info-dumped on us rather than fleshed out in a more engaging way. Though, the world is really creative, so I don't feel comfortable taking off much for that, not to mention even though there is a lot of exposition about Monarch Forest, I still do think the concept behind it is a good one. It's overall a really cool idea and world that deserves a very high score.

Dialogue: 10/15. There isn't too much dialogue in the story since this is a plot and concept-driven narrative, and of the dialogue there, it is primarily Jeremy talking to himself or to a being that cannot talk back. And, by the way, I'm not saying that's a flaw. No, actually, quite the opposite: this works in the narrative's favor and does a good job further driving home the isolation Jeremy feels, making the reader feel isolated with him. So when it comes to the concept behind the dialogue, it's good! And the dialogue itself is good, too, doing a solid job portraying Jeremy's thoughts as he descends into madness throughout the story.

There are minor dialogue errors present throughout the story. When you're doing a normal tag, you do them correctly, which is good, but when you're using special punctuation, like question marks, tags are done incorrectly. For example: "What do you mean?" He questioned (chap 1). Since dialogue tags are continuations of the dialogue and not new sentences, it does not matter if the dialogue ends with a comma, question mark, or exclamation mark, the tag needs to be lowercase unless it is a proper noun. So it would become: "What do you mean?" he questioned. I hope that makes sense!

Another thing is a debated topic, though I very strongly align on one side as you will see, but I would recommend not using actions as dialogue tags. By that I mean tags like these: "Works for me," he shrugged (chap 1). The shrugged being the action tag. The reason is because of how they're called dialogue tags and not people tags, therefore describing how words are produced. Words can't really shrug, or smile, or laugh, but they can be said, asked, whispered, etc. I especially recommend this because there are so many alternatives. I.e.:

He shrugged. "Works for me."

"Works for me," he said with a shrug.

"Works for me." He shrugged.

Those are a few solutions that don't remove the shrugged while also not using it as a direct dialogue tag, so it looks a bit smoother, in my opinion, and is easier to imagine.

I would recommend avoiding using all caps in dialogue except for like maybe one or two words for emphasis. The things like the writing, like 'REX HAS SEEN YOU,' is fine in all caps since that's writing, but in dialogue, it can easily come off as overdramatic. Along with that, it's also telling over showing, and there have been a few studies finding that excessive all caps can slow reading speed unnaturally, making it hard for readers to immerse themselves in what you're writing. So I would recommend avoiding them as much as possible and implementing more showing over telling methods to display his emotions.

The last thing I'll mention is I'd recommend downsizing on how often you use ellipses to start dialogue since it can be a little awkward. Like: "..."Won't you get into trouble?" Jeremy asked (prologue). I chose this one because of the quotation mark error here where there's an unneeded one in there. In the line before this, you say He gave a hesitant look to the clown. You've already established the hesitation, so there's no need for the opening ellipse.

Overall, the dialogue does a good job bringing Jeremy's panic and anxiety to life, and I enjoyed the way you used it throughout the story!

Spelling & Grammar: 8.5/10. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG, throughout the narrative is solid, as you can tell by the high score. I don't believe I noticed a single typo, which is awesome. When the technical side of the story is good, there isn't too much to say other than it's good, so awesome job with it! There are only minor errors I'll mention below.

Mostly in the prologue, there are a few notable errors that could be tweaked, but nothing consistent, so it's not a big deal. For example: Swallowing nervously, the university student uneasily regarding them as he felt every single one of their dark eyes carefully following his movements (prologue). Consider: Swallowing nervously, the university student uneasily regarded them as he felt every single one of their dark eyes carefully following his movements. Another example: He looked to his right, then to his left down, his tired frightened eyes searching down the... (prologue). Consider adding a comma after tired, making it ...his tired, frightened eyes searching down the....

So those were just some inconsistent but noticeable awkward sentences throughout, and there were a few other sentences like that present throughout the prologue especially. Overall, the SPAG is very good!

Title/blurb/cover: 8.5/10. Footsteps Approaching is an eye-catching title. Not only did it catch my attention, but it also has proper capitalization, making it good both from a creative perspective and from a technical perspective. For those reasons, I have no critiques for the title and think it does a good job making readers wonder what the story is going to be about.

The blurb is overall good. I didn't notice any SPAG errors, so if there were any, they were so minor that they went unnoticed. Along with that, the blurb clearly shows what's going to occur in the narrative, and it does so in an interesting and unique way that is unlike most of the blurbs I've seen. For those reasons, I have no critiques for the blurb and think you did a good job bringing it to life!

I like the 8bit feel the cover has (and the overall 8bit theme you have going on throughout the story), and how it shows the dinosaur on the cover without being so explicit in detail that it takes away the mystery of what this beast is. We still have plenty of room for interpretation, and I like that a lot. The only minor critique I have is there's a lot of empty space, especially toward the bottom, so it could be interesting to see that space more filled out, but other than that small thing, I thought the cover was great!

Total: 74.5/100.

Tales From The Heart (Accidental Crush) by adorablefanatic

Review:

*Accidental Crush was the story judged

Characters: 12/15. The main character here is Arya, though there are other characters present throughout the story, like the twin brothers and the mysterious hottie. For the sake of this review, I will primarily be focusing on Arya since she is our lead and the one who gets the most detail by far. Before I begin with Arya, though, I do think all the characters presented throughout are good. None of them are weak or feel thrown in, with the twins providing cuteness and that sibling chaos you expect from... well, siblings... and the group of boys giving Arya her main conflict throughout the story, so every character serves their purpose and does a good job interesting the reader!

Now, as for Arya, I enjoyed her character very much. She has a very stylistic POV that makes her engaging to read about, and I honestly really felt warm reading about her. She's adorable. I was rooting for her and wanted to see her succeed, but it's okay that she didn't and accepted it. It was a mature decision from her, and I think she works super well as the protagonist. It's kinda hard not to like her, you know? She just has so much charm to her that made me like her immediately, and I love how she's assertive with the twins but gets all shy around the mystery boy. There's honestly nothing negative I have to say about her, no critiques about Arya whatsoever. She's awesome!

The only deductions come from the frequent grammar and dialogue errors that make it sometimes hard to attach to the characters due to awkward moments and times we need to reread to try and pick up on what the emotions are trying to display. However, I will explain that in more detail and with examples throughout the review. I write my character sections last, so I wrote the rest of the review prior to this, and future... or I suppose past... Raven will explain those points later!

Overall, the characters work for the story and do a good job elevating it, with Arya being the most interesting character, which goes without saying is great since she's the protagonist!

Plot: 8/10. The plot is simple: Arya gains an accidental crush while out and about in the world, and it turns into her trying to stealthily check the guy out and learn more, but it doesn't exactly go in her favor when she leaves not knowing if she'll ever see him again.

I think this simplistic plot is great. It gives Arya a chance to shine and is almost like a just-so kind of narrative: what we're reading is what's happening, and we're along for the ride. It's mundane and focuses on showing a little crush that will make readers feel like they're high schoolers all over again with their first crush. Or, at least, for me that's what happened, though I risk making myself sound old by saying "It reminds me of when I was in high school," lol. Though it is crazy to think I haven't been in high school in years now...

But anyway, nostalgia aside, the plot works and does a great job elevating Arya and giving her a true chance to shine, which is part of the reason why I enjoyed Arya so much!

The only critique I have is pacing-wise, this feels like it definitely could have stayed at two chapters instead of making it four and potentially more down the line, though I'll explain that in the next section. All in all, the plot is solid and does what it needs to to keep Arya engaging.

Pacing: 10/15. The overall pacing of the short is good and does a good job transporting the readers from point A to point B. Chapters 1 and 2 are especially paced well, and while the beginning shopping segment could potentially be trimmed a bit to get to the pizza restaurant a little faster as that's the main part of the story, that didn't take away from my enjoyment of the story at all. When we get to the pizza restaurant, I was engaged the entire time. Even though it's a simple plot, it still manages to use Arya's adorable POV and the crush feelings to keep the reader hooked on what's going on.

The only critique I have is I can definitely tell this was meant to be two chapters, with the second chapter being a more definitive ending where Arya accepts that she isn't going to see the hottie again anytime soon, if at all, and it was an accidental crush that she'd remember but never see to fruition. That's a solid ending, honestly, and it subverted my expectations in a natural way I enjoyed. Now that's not to say chapters 3 and 4 aren't good or don't add anything, but it just feels like the narrative was meant to end with chapter 2, and then 3 and 4 got added. But that's not to say delete them since that's a lot of hard work. It's more just for future stories, consider downsizing if you feel an ending has been reached. But, that aside, the pacing throughout the first two chapters is really good and deserves a high score!

Creativity & Descriptions: 10/15. The story idea is relatively simple as it follows Arya through an accidental crush. However, simple doesn't mean bad. I actually quite like this idea! It's cute, it's to-the-point, and it's followed up by good execution that makes the idea engaging. For those reasons, I think the creative side of the story is solid!

As for the descriptions, I like how you implemented the five senses to help elevate the descriptions. I always encourage authors to play around with the five senses to give descriptions more weight and intrigue, and I encourage you to keep playing around with the five senses as I enjoyed your usage of them here. At the same time, it didn't feel like you were going over-the-top with the descriptions, and even if others may feel differently, I honestly think it'd fit in with Arya's obsession over this mysterious hottie, so I wouldn't mind it even if it went over-the-top. Though, I didn't feel it did and thought it was a good balance between description and genuine plot and character progression, making for an enjoyable read!

The deductions come from some awkward sentences and frequent grammar errors that make the descriptions not as impactful as they otherwise could be, and I would also recommend limiting how often you describe smells as "wafting." While you don't do it a lot, I only recommend it because you use it more than once, and also because it's become a very cliche way to describe smells, so I would recommend considering diversifying the descriptions of smells. Otherwise, the creativity and descriptions are good!

Worldbuilding: 8.5/10. The world isn't too prominent in the narrative, but that's not a flaw at all. This is a contained narrative that's small scale and doesn't need to be this giant thing, so that means the world is contained, too. It was a good decision to have the focus remain narrow, meaning we as readers can focus more on Arya and what's going on with the plot. Along with that, the descriptions are pretty good, like I mentioned before, and I like how you implemented the five senses to bring the world and its environments more to life. For those reasons, I think the worldbuilding is good.

The only deductions come from some awkward sentences here and there that I'll explain in the grammar section, though they impact here since they led to awkward descriptions that could make it hard to visualize certain environments. Otherwise, the worldbuilding is nice.

Dialogue: 9/15. The dialogue throughout the story is okay and does what it needs to to keep the story moving. I especially like the twins and any time they're being their chaotic selves. Their dialogue is fun to read. Along with that, I enjoyed Arya trying to talk sternly to them. It was cute to see her put her foot down and try to be all big sister, haha. I loved their dynamic, and since a large chunk of their dynamic is shown through dialogue, that means the dialogue definitely did something right!

The main area where deductions were taken is tags. Dialogue tags are an extremely common error but also an extremely important part of dialogue as they determine how dialogue is presented to the reader. Here, dialogue tags are done incorrectly, where you'll have a period/full stop at the end of dialogue even when you have a tag, but when using a tag after dialogue, there are two important things to remember. One is the tag is always lowercase unless it is a proper noun, and two is you never end dialogue with a period/full stop if you are using a tag after the dialogue. Here's an example from the text: "Arya dear, I think this salwar kameez will look good on you." My mother offered (chap 1). The period/full stop after "you" needs to be a comma, so it would become: "...will look good on you," my mother offered. Here are some more examples of random dialogue and how to tag them:

"How are you?" she asked.

"Did you know," she said, turning to look at him, "that I missed you?"

"I missed you!" she shouted.

"I'm here," Raven said.

"I'm here," she said.

So those are some random examples, but the key thing to note is that the only tag that got capitalized is the one with "Raven" because Raven is a name and therefore a proper noun, but since the others are not proper nouns, they're never capitalized. I hope all of that makes sense.

I would also recommend not using abbreviations, like omg, in dialogue and thoughts. I say this because when you specifically use an abbreviation, we will imagine it as the character literally saying/thinking o-m-g. Not oh my God, the letters o-m-g, and in thoughts especially, I doubt anyone is using abbreviations, like I can't really imagine anyone uses lmao in their thoughts, so I would recommend avoiding using abbreviations and instead spelling them out, so oh my God instead of omg. I hope that makes sense!

Overall, the dialogue works for the story, particularly with the twins and their interactions with Arya, though there could be some tweaks to the technical side of things to help with the presentation of the dialogue.

Spelling & Grammar: 6/10. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar, or SPAG for short, is okay throughout the story though could use some tweaks, and I'll mention those tweaks below.

There are frequent spacing errors present throughout the story, which aren't big deals, but they can hurt reading speed, and it'd help the text flow more fluidly if the text were properly spaced. Like I said, it's not a huge deal, hence why I'm starting with it, but still worth mentioning. For example, you'll have excess spacing between punctuation marks. For example: "What ?!" Consider: "What?!" You frequently will put an extra space between punctuation and words, but you don't need a space between them in most cases, like commas, semicolons, colors, quotation marks, full stops/periods, exclamation marks, etc. The space would come after. So, for example, look at this sentence: She said ,sighing dreamily and shooting me a wink. It should be: She said, sighing dreamily and shooting me a wink. I hope that makes sense!

There are frequent comma errors where you'll be missing commas where you need them. For example: I muttered letting out a sigh (chap 1). It should be: I muttered, letting out a sigh. In this context, you're using "muttered" as a dialogue tag, and in most cases, if you have an -ing verb after a dialogue tag (in this case, muttered), then you need a comma after the tag and before the verb. I.e., "I'm so tired," I said, sighing. There are very frequent comma errors where you're missing commas, so I would recommend using an online grammar editing software to help identify where the commas go.

There are also the dialogue tag errors I mentioned in the dialogue section. I'm not going to go over them again here other than to mention them since they are a grammar error, but since I explained earlier, I won't explain again.

There are some awkward sentences, too, such as "They fight but patch up immediately soon after" (chap 1). Consider: "They fight but patch up immediately." I removed the "soon after" since they're unnecessary and make the sentence a bit awkward. If you're ever unsure about a sentence, I recommend reading it out loud since reading aloud helps catch the most errors. I personally plug my text into a text-to-speech, or TTS, generator and have it played back to me, and I've found so many errors that way to the point where I don't bother with grammar checkers anymore and just use TTS. If you're interested in using TTS, if you Google text-to-speech generators, I'm sure a whole bunch will come up.

Overall, the SPAG is okay throughout the runtime of the story, it could just use some tweaks.

Title/blurb/cover: 7/10. The title of the whole compilation is Tales From The Heart, which is a good title that evokes emotion and makes the reader curious about the story. The only minor critique I have is consider lowercasing the from and the, making it Tales from the Heart. I say this because of the title capitalization rules of Chicago, or CMOS, which is the manuscript editing writing style, and in Chicago, the from and the would be lowercase. Other than that minor thing, the title is good!

This is the blurb:

Inside awaits hundreds of stories bursting to be told! Millions of lives waiting to be experienced, by you dear reader.

Read on to experience a rollercoaster of emotions.

Feel the rush of adrenaline!

The greatest of happiness and the deepest of sorrows.

Unique stories which will make you stand on the edge of your seat and make you fall in love with the characters and their awesome journeys!
Some will be realistic while others will be like the fantasies you daydream.

These are some tales written from my heart.

A collection of multiple short stories. Mostly Young Adult and Romance but also includes many other genres.

Consider:

Inside awaits hundreds of stories waiting to be told! Millions of lives waiting to be experienced by you, dear reader.

These are tales written from my heart that will keep you on the edge of your seat and fall in love with the characters and their awesome journeys! Some will be realistic while others will be like the fantasies you daydream.

A collection of multiple short stories. Mostly Young Adult and Romance, but there are many other genres.

I shortened the blurb quite a bit and did my best to tweak the grammar errors and make the sentences sound more natural. I eliminated many of the introductory phrases since they got a little repetitive, in my opinion, and I didn't feel like you needed many of them (i.e., I combined "Unique stories which will make you stand on the edge of your seat" with "these are some tales written from my heart" for more fluidity). So all in all, the blurb does sum up what the story is about, which is awesome, though it could use some tweaks to its presentation as there are frequent SPAG errors and some hard-to-understand sentences.

As for the cover, I like the concept behind the cover by having the text be inside the two figures and going back and forth. It's an interesting visual I enjoyed, and I think the background image is awesome, too. The only thing I'm not as huge of a fan of is the font and font color. Considering this is about tales of the heart, maybe a darker pink like the color in the background of the image could be more thematically cohesive, but I'm not sure. I'm not a graphic designer, so I'd recommend getting a second opinion from someone far more experienced than me before making any changes. But the font and color aside, I think the cover has a good background image with a good concept!

Total: 70.5/100.

~End~

Thank you everyone for applying to the Candlelight Awards! You can expect more results soon and plenty of prizes to be going out.

I don't know why you're still here, all the way at the bottom... did you skip all the reviews to see if I said something at the end? Cause these reviews are 40k words long, ain't no way you read all that. Bruh I barely read all that and I wrote them. You came to see if I would say anything, didn't you?

Well, here it goes: Daily reminder that Jimin is hot.

That's all.

Buh bye 💃💃💃